The Olympic tournament's long and glorious history makes it deserving of support and respect
Neymar, the mohawked Brazilian wunderkind, will be there. And so, most probably, will David Beckham and Gareth Bale, offering a two-speed solution down Team GB's flanks. Meanwhile, Juan Mata, Sergio Busquets and Thiago Alc�ntara are so keen on securing Spanish gold they want to hop from Euro 2012 to the Olympics before diving headlong into the new season. There is just one small problem: few people are falling over themselves to watch the football at London 2012.
Most events at the Games could have hoisted up sold-out boards several times over, but football is an exception ? with only 500,000 of the two million tickets bought so far. On Tuesday, when the draws for the men's and women's tournaments are made and the blanks in the schedules are filled in, organisers believe things will change. But for now there remains a curious reluctance by Britons to embrace a tournament that, while it stands long in the shadow of the World Cup, offers much in way of history, legacy and the thrill of the new.
Neymar, the 20-year-old striker with the quick feet and sharp tongue, is emphatic: "This is a dream of mine," he says when asked about London 2012. "It's very important to everyone here."
S�rgio Xavier, the editor of the Brazilian sports magazine Placar, goes further. "The one thing Brazil has never won is a gold medal in men's or women's football," he says. "It has become a curse and an obsession. It doesn't help that Argentina and Uruguay have won the tournament and we haven't."
Those emotions are echoed in Uruguay, where the national team's nickname, La Celeste Ol�mpica (The Olympic Sky Blue), reflects the importance attached to the gold medals won at the 1924 and 1928 Games. "Everyone is very excited," says the Uruguayan journalist Martin Fern�ndez. "There is great expectation on our new generation and our coach, Oscar Tab�rez, says three of his four 'extra-class players' [Luis Su�rez, Diego Forl�n, Edinson Cavani and the captain, Diego Lugano] will play. They are taking it that seriously."
There is no such energy around Team GB, unless you count the white heat generated by home unions fretful that an uncomfortable two-week frisson could have a lifetime of consequences in Fifa's corridors.
Some within football blame high prices for the poor ticket sales; who wants to pay Premier League prices for Oman v Gabon when the real thing kicks off soon after? And it probably does not help that Stuart Pearce, who glumly led England to nowheresville during last summer's European Under-21 Championships, is in charge of a squad without names until June. And that is before you get to the fundamentalists, who believe the Olympics should offer the ultimate test, not a souped-up under-23 tournament, and therefore the sport should not feature at all.
A historical counterblast is that football in the Olympics predates the World Cup by 22 years and, with the exception of Los Angeles 1932, has been a fixture ever since; a more emotive pitch is that the tournament usually features more goals and tales of the unexpected than the World Cup. Few will forget Nigeria coming from behind to stun a Brazil team containing Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos and Bebeto 4-3 in the semi-finals in Atlanta, before repeating the trick to shock Argentina, starring Hern�n Crespo, Roberto Ayala and Claudio L�pez, 3-2 in the final. Four years later, Cameroon, spearheaded by a 19-year-old Samuel Eto'o, beat a Spain side featuring Xavi 5-3 on penalties in the final, in front of 104,000 spectators in Sydney.
Xavi and Eto'o are global stars now, but the Olympics was their footballing debutante ball, alerting the world to their talents. While by Beijing 2008 Sergio Ag�ero and Leo Messi were stars ? room-mates enjoying PlayStation and cumbia music in between destroying opponents ? others in the Argentina side, such as Angel di Mar�a and Ezequiel Lavezzi, made their mark for the first time.
New names and stories will emerge from London 2012 and, hopefully, the stadiums will be packed to witness them. The nagging fear is that England has form when it comes to narrow parochialism. It was slow to embrace European club competitions and, while football came home during Euro 96, not everyone was warmly welcomed, as the 19,107 that saw Bulgaria v Romania at St James' Park can testify.
That parochialism is already evident among sections of the media, who seem to be portraying the tournament as little more than an extended Beckham UK farewell tour. It is about far more than that, as those with tickets will soon find out.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/apr/21/london-2012-football
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