Nadeshiko aim for gold in London

London 2012 Olympic Games Womens Football Final

Japan v USA 

7.45pm GMT Wembley Stadium, London

Japan can add the Olympic title to their World Cup crown at Wembley today to complete a historic double.

Assured of at least silver, Nadeshiko will pick up their first Olympic medals this afternoon in Wembley having lost their bronze-medal playoff to Germany in Beijing four years ago. 

In the way of Japanese gold this afternoon is the USA, eager to avenge their penalty shootout defeat in last year's World Cup Final in Frankfurt. The Americans also see the Olympics as 'their' tournament, having bagged three of the four titles since women's soccer started in the games in 1996.

Japan made heavy weather of their group stage with two 0-0 draws as well beating France 2-1 in their semi-final, surviving a number of scares as the French dominated the second half of the game. The World Cup holders will need all their reserves tonight to defeat an American team who will try to make their physical advantage trump the Japanese possession game.

If Nadeshiko win, they will become the first Asian nation to hold the Olympic title too.

Womens football has been a success at London 2012 in beating previous tournament attendance records and the smashing UK attendance record for the sport. Over 70,000 watched Great Britain defeat Brazil at Wembley and tonight's final should draw closer to 80,000. Brazil drew over 30,000 for its other two group games, but the US got only 11,000 for a group game in Glasgow and 10,000 for their quarter-final against New Zealand in Newcastle.

The host nation drew an average of 42,000 for its group games, while Japan's biggest crowd was 61,482 for its semi-final at Wembley.

Routes to the Final:

JAPAN Group Stage 

Japan 2-1 Canada

Japan 0-0 Sweden

Japan 0-0 South Africa

QF Japan 2-0 Brazil

SF Japan 2-1 France

USA Group Stage  

USA 4-2 France

USA 3-0 Colombia

USA 1-0 North Korea

QF USA 2-0 New Zealand

SF USA 4-3 Canada

Top Scorers: JAPAN - Yuki Ogimi 2, USA - Abby Wambach 5

OLYMPIC GAMES WOMENS FOOTBALL Previous Winners

Atlanta 1996 USA

Sydney 2000 Norway

Athens 2004 USA

Beijing 2008 USA

 

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Olympics Take Korean Minds Off Summer Heat

The first few days of August will be remembered in South Korea for sizzling temperatures that reached 38 degrees Celsius. With the high humidity levels, many Seoulites headed for the river to cool down and watch the Olympics sat on the grass while drinking beer and directing fried chicken delivery riders through the sea of mats on the grass.

As well as brewers and chicken friers, it has been a successful couple of weeks in all kinds of events as the country quickly moved to the near the top of the medal standings and stayed there. Football is not going to add to that golden haul but that doesn’t mean that it has not been an exciting couple of weeks as the Olympic team reached the semi-finals of the men’s football tournament.

That dream ended with a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Brazil at Old Trafford but it was no disgrace. In that game, Korea caused problems for the South Americans, favourites for the gold. With the game goalless defender Juan kicked Ji Dong-won the head as the Sunderland striker tried to nod the ball home into an empty net.

With Brazil leading 1-0 at the start of the second half, a clearer spot-kick was refused as Kim Bo-kyoung was chopped down in the box by Sandro. 3-0 flattered the Brazilians but once again, Korea could not take their chances when they came. That was the story of the competition though Brazil were the first team that the Taeguk Warriors met who were good enough to make them pay.

The group stage had been unspectacular but solid. A 2-1 win over Switzerland was sandwiched between goalless draws against Mexico, now preparing for the final against Brazil, and Gabon. All three group games saw Korea in control of possession but struggling to create clear-cut chances and struggling to convert those that were made. What was encouraging was the fact that the defence held firm, conceding one goal in 270 minutes of football.

Koo Ja-cheol, of German club Augsburg and Celtic’s Ki Sung-yeung, caught the eye in midfield with Kim Chang-soo roving up and down the flank from the right-back spot. Kim was injured five minutes into the quarter-final against Great Britain, a game won by the Asian team after a penalty shootout.

That was the high point for Korea. Beating the hosts in front of 80,000 fans at Millenium Stadium. A bright start saw Ji Dong-won fire home from the outside the area and a couple of soft penalties went to the hosts. One was converted by Aaron Ramsey and one soon after was saved by Jung Sung-ryeong.

The game went to penalties and in the end, a spot kick from Daniel Sturridge was saved by goalkeeper Lee Beom-yeong, who came on in the second half for the injured Jung, and Ki Sung-yeung fired home the last penalty.

Then came the Brazil match. It wasn’t to be but for fans at home, to see some of the K-League’s best young players in action and matching counterparts around the world certainly took minds off the oppressive conditions at home.

Back Home

Jeonbuk Motors and FC Seoul have been pulling away and the title race is looking increasingly a two-horse race with Suwon Bluewings falling by the wayside. Jeonbuk have said goodbye to two talented imports in Huang Bowen from China and Luis henique. Luis has been replaced by another Brazilian by the name of Leanardo while Australian defender Alex Wilkinson fills the Asian quota.

Suwon fans have been voicing their displeasure at a series of bad results and the fact that after a recent setback the players did not come and bow to the faithful behind the goals.

There are only four games left for most of the 16 teams before they are split into two groups with the top half fighting it out for the title and the bottom battling to avoid relegation.

Seongnam Ilhwa are the surprise name in the bottom group and need some good results sooner rather than later in order to avoid the ignominy of being stuck in the lower half for the rest of the season. Chunnam Dragons, a usual mid-table team, find themselves much further down than usual and are in real trouble.

Two teams will be relegated this year with army club Sangju Sangmu guaranteed to drop so there is one spot for the others to avoid.

As things stand, Gwangju FC, a little surprisingly as the team has some decent players is seriously struggling along with other usual suspects such as Gangwon FC and Daejeon Citizen – who managed a shock 1-0 win at Jeonbuk last weekend. Daegu FC have been performing reasonably well under Brazilian coach Moacir Pereira and while they are unlikely to escape the bottom half, relegation should not be too much of a worry.

Euro 2012 football

Olympic men's soccer 2012

Men's Football Tournament 26th July - 11th August 2012 

Venues -

Wembley, London   90,000
Old Trafford, Manchester  76,000
Millennium, Cardiff  74,500
St James Park, Newcastle   52,000
Hampden Park, Glasgow   52,000
Ricoh Arena, Coventry  32,500



Group A: Great Britain, Senegal, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay
Group B: Mexico, South Korea, Gabon, Switzerland
Group C: Brazil, Egypt, Belarus, New Zealand
Group D: Spain, Japan, Honduras, Morocco


1st round - 26th July, 29th July, 1st August
Quarter-Finals - 4th August (London, Manchester, Newcastle & Cardiff)
Semi-Finals - 7th August (London & Manchester)
Bronze medal match - 10th August (Cardiff)
Final - 11th August (London)

Bookies' favourites in order: Brazil, Spain, Great Britain, Uruguay, Switzerland, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, Egypt, Belarus, Senegal, Morocco, Gabon, Honduras, U.A.E., New Zealand.

Olympic Men's Football Champions

2008   Argentina
2004   Argentina
2000   Cameroon
1996   Nigeria
1992   Spain
1988   Soviet Union
1984   France
1980   Czechoslovakia
1976   East Germany
1972   Poland
1968   Hungary
1964   Hungary
1960   Yugoslavia
1956   Soviet Union
1952   Hungary
1948   Sweden
1936   Italy
1928   Uruguay
1924   Uruguay
1920   Belgium
1912   Great Britain
1908   Great Britain
1904   Canada
1900   Great Britain


Official schedule
Official ticketing site


-Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile


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Coe no to football after the Olympics

London 2012 Chief and former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe has said he will focus uniquely on athletics following next summer's games, quashing hopes he may develop his career in football politics instead.

"My focus post-2012 will be track and field, absolutely," Coe told Reuters. "There's no question about that," adding that his desire was to become head of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Coe, winner of four Olympic medals and a former world-record holder at 1500m, first got involved in soccer politics in 2006, when Sepp Blatter appointed him as chairman of FIFA's first Ethics Committee, before he stood down in order to help England's bid for the 2018 World Cup.

Although it could be argued both ventures ended in failure, Coe's reputation in the corridors of the sporting world is still immense.

As revealed exclusively by Soccerphile in 2008, Coe was headhunted to mount a challenge to take over at the Football Association in the wake of England's failure to qualify for Euro 2008, but declined because of his commitments to the 2012 Olympic Games.

Many would have welcomed Coe's leadership qualities and global influence as a way to restore England as a major player on and off the field of international football. English soccer's loss is international athletics' gain for the foreseeable future, but the FA will not lose his number any time soon.

Coe remains a Chelsea F.C. season-ticket holder.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Hammers strike for gold

West Ham United have beaten Tottenham Hotspur to London's Olympic Stadium, according to the BBC.

After a bitter battle between the two London clubs, the East Londoners are set to be announced as the Olympic Park Legacy Committee's preferred tenant.

Neither club has much in reality to celebrate. While Tottenham will now retreat from their audacious cross-city foray to their original plan to rebuild their White Hart Lane home, the club remains marooned in a grubby neighbourhood with poor accessibility.

Hammers fans on the other hand will benefit from 25,000 more seats than at present and Stratford's modern transport hub but will have to bring their binoculars to spy the action across an eight-lane running track, whatever the optimistic artists' impressions show.

Athletics and football do not make happy bedfellows and the marriage may end in divorce, but at least the stadium decision, set to be rubber-stamped by the government, respects geography, history and the civic pride of hosting the Olympic Games, of which track events are the blue riband.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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The Cockerel has landed

Tottenham Hotspur have released an artist's impression of their desired new 60,000-seat home on the site of London's Olympic Stadium.

After it was initially thought Spurs were merely seeking leverage to persuade Haringey Council to approve their White Hart Lane redevelopment, the picture leaves no doubt that Stratford is their intended destination in 2012.

Chairman Daniel Levy is talking of East London as their one and only option right now as the postponed decision on the preferred bidder is due within a week.

West Ham have the support of most of the athletics community, including the IOC and 2012 chief Sebastian Coe, as well as the majority of Londoners polled, but Spurs' greater financial clout seems to be edging ahead as the Legacy Committee pore over the economic promises. The call for more time to decide must be ominous for the Hammers - on paper they should have been crowned winners already because unlike Tottenham they had pledged to retain the running track.

While West Ham's Vice Chairman Karren Brady invokes the Queen's name and speaks of a "corporate crime" should Spurs triumph, she is equally aware that Spurs have stolen a march on the issue of athletics legacy: They are promising to develop Crystal Palace athletics stadium into a 25,000-seater open all year when West Ham will only leave the larger Olympic Stadium open for track and field for 20 days.

It is impossible to miss the Canary Wharf skyline lurking strategically above the stadium in the artist's impression, a symbol of the big money Tottenham are hoping will carry them across the finish line.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Olympic stadium a fight for soccer's soul...?

Football and the Olympics does matter after all.

By the end of this week either Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United will be in pole position to take over London's Olympic Stadium once the flame goes out on the 12th of August 2012. The battle for Stratford has turned into a fire-fight between two capital clubs with all manner of voices wading in, from politicians to Pelé.

But whichever club wins the right to move house next year, the decision will also record for posterity just what is driving the soul of British sport at this moment. It is price versus value and by the end we will see just how much money can buy.

Olympic stadia are beautiful, but what is to be done with them once the party is over? Athletics just does not pay, however popular it will appear for a month at the games. Next year, the track events will as ever be the blue riband of the games, sports amateur in tradition if not in practice anymore. Although Baron de Coubertin's Corinthian ideals may now be a quaint memory, the fact Britain does not possess a single venue able to host a major track championship is painful proof of just how far athletics lags behind the professional team sports in money-making.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the UK team finished fourth in the medals table, beaten only by superpowers China, Russia and the United States, yet a closer inspection reveals only four of Britain's 47 medals were won inside the main arena. The velodrome by contrast yielded sixteen. The 2012 stadium cost the British taxpayer half a billion pounds and the odd athletics meet alone will not pay for its future upkeep. Enter football, riding to the rescue.

Tottenham are thriving on this financial uncertainty, and are wielding the buying power of their fans - 36,000 season-ticket holders and 40,000 on a waiting list, as their battering ram on the doors of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the body who will pick the winner. Sold out Spurs matches and the rest of the site under the aegis of AEG, who transformed the Millennium Dome from a ridiculed white elephant into the hugely successful O2 Arena, can surely reduce the tax bill faster than West Ham can and reassure the anxious politicians in this age of austerity.

And if there were any doubt about which tenant would be the more lucrative, Spurs' Champions League adventure this season stands in sharp contrast to the Hammers' relegation fight. Both clubs are ogling a new stadium for free and the proceeds from auctioning off their own real estate, although the Hammers need the money more.

West Ham are playing what they know are less tangible but more respectable cards - those of trust, altruism and tribalism: They are hoping the promise of an athletics legacy for the nation at the time of bidding is an oath of honour, that the OPLC will feel that track and field, however unprofitable, deserves at least one big arena when football already has so many, and the fact that the locality is far more claret and blue than white and navy territory.

A club crossing town after a century in Haringey does go against the natural order of the sport, whose roots lie in brawls between medieval parishes, but the game has come a long way since those Shrovetide tussles. In only the last ten years the Premier League has metamorphosed into an international division based in England while London, an economic hot-spot conveniently located halfway between the financial hotspots of Asia and East Coast America, has also been transformed by a globalised influx which has left its old face a folktale.

Franchise moves are common in American sports where many areas of population lack professional sports teams but less so in England, where a wealthy investor need only pluck a struggling club and whisk it through the divisions towards the big time.

The Olympic environs are virgin territory anyway, as is much of East London's growth corridor and the monied business district of Canary Wharf, whose cityscape resembles North America, not England. Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy sees relocation as part of a bigger picture for this part of the capital and doubtless salivates over the shining new transport links to Stratford while his club's fans struggle to reach White Hart Lane, a nice ground in an otherwise grotty urban neighbourhood.

And Spurs fans mostly do not come from Tottenham these days, any more than West Ham's hail from the Bangladeshi area around Upton Park, so talk of tribal land rights can sound odd in the mobile London of 2011.

West Ham have the moral case if there is one, based on the promises London's bidding team used to convince the International Olympic Committee to pick them ahead of Paris in the first place. The IOC and world athletics' governing body have rushed to their aid in the final days of the campaign.

The IAAF chief Lamine Diack did not mince his words, speaking of London's "big lie" were it to choose Spurs, adding for good measure,

"And after that it is a betrayal...You can consider yourself dead. You are finished."

Sebastian Coe, the public face of London 2012 was unambiguous: "We have a moral obligation."

Tottenham have brushed aside claims they are arrogantly ignoring Olympic promises by pledging instead to redevelop Crystal Palace athletics stadium to 25,000, the initial planned capacity of the Olympic stadium after the games. With the hours counting down until D-Day, Spurs wheeled out Pelé, Jimmy Greaves and their coach Harry Redknapp to stress how football and athletics do not mix happily in the same arena, a fact which is hard to deny. But West Ham landed a counter-punch from an unlikely angle.

Out of the blue last week, Crystal Palace F.C. announced they intend to develop the nearby athletics venue into a new football stadium, returning to their ancestral home where they started in 1905. The Eagles' territorial claim on that site is pre-eminent, their financial backing as yet invisible. Palace could yet even strike a deal with Spurs and end up with views across an eight-lane running track.

Sliding stands as in the Stade de France would have solved the sight lines problem, but the Olympics were won in the heady days of New Labour's noughties boom before the spectre of financial crash appeared around construction time. The discount re-design which emerged after recalculations neatly encapsulated the new age of western austerity after Beijing's tour-de-force 'Birds Nest' of 2008.

What once seemed like a shoe-in for Leyton Orient, the closest club to the Olympics site, has now become a spat between two Premier League sides that is starting to turn ugly. A gazumping by Spurs would deal a near-fatal blow to Britain's hopes of ever hosting a major athletics tournament again, whilst confirming the great god of football rules unchallenged, making up the rules as he goes along.

But while the rising anger from the athletics world at Tottenham's interloping could swing it for West Ham, the race for gold and silver still looks too tight to call.

The Hammers have a more wholesome claim, which chimes with the Olympic spirit in which the stadium was created in the first place, but let us not be fooled. It is purely money, or the lack of it in their instance, which motivates any football club to subject its supporters to a dreaded running track.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Return of the meddling midget

An annoying ghost from the past is back to haunt English football.

Colin Moynihan, Margaret Thatcher's loyal elf who shrilly yet unsuccessfully hawked her ill-conceived plan for I.D. cards for football fans around an unwilling nation 22 years ago, has returned to put his foot in it with soccer again.

Moynihan, UK Minister for Sport between 1987 and 1990, has waded into the debate over the 2012 Great Britain Olympic team, in his role as chairman of the British Olympic Association.

Despite categorical opposition from the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh football associations, Moynihan has insisted the Olympic team must reflect the UK as a whole, and allow the likes of Gareth Bale, this season's outstanding performer in the UEFA Champions League, to play for Britain.

The diminutive Tory points to the BOA's Constitutional requirement that all British sportsmen must be considered for selection and warned that an English-only team could trigger a flood of legal challenges from excluded Celts.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter has assured the four associations in writing that a truly British Olympic team will not change anything regarding their status, but he alone cannot out-vote any motion to that effect supported by a majority of his organisation's delegates.

The infamous ID-card plan which Moynihan trumpeted was a desperate response to 1985's Heysel tragedy and a never-ending saga of domestic skirmishes involving English football fans.

It had first been mooted in Judge Popplewell's verdict on 1985's Bradford fire, but the driving force behind it was the late and unlamented MP David Evans, a former chairman of Luton Town. Evans, who belonged to what was colloquially known as 'The Broadmoor Wing' of the Conservative Party, took the unprecedented decision in 1985 to ban all away fans from Luton's Kenilworth Road ground following a famous riot by Millwall supporters. Meanwhile, Luton's own supporters had to register and gain an identity card which was swiped at the turnstiles.

Moynihan, crassly, sported a Charlton Athletic tie for his TV appearances - he was MP for nearby Lewisham East at the time, but wore his soccer knowledge lightly as he told us again and again the only way to stop hooliganism was for all fans to carry cards. The then government was football-unfriendly, with the exception of Nottingham Forest-supporting Ken Clarke, and made no effort to tap into the sport's popularity like every subsequent government has.

Thatcher's provincial market town upbringing and education at Oxford had kept her far from professional football and the industrial regions it sprang from. Her reign coincided with the darkest years of English hooliganism but she adamantly refused to accept that it was social, rather than footballing problems, that she was dealing with.

The opposition to ID cards was near-universal amongst football folk and the whole sorry episode was instrumental in giving birth to a national supporters' association in response to a suddenly politicised environment.

It was the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989 and the subsequent Taylor Report which delivered the coup de grace to Thatcher's foray into football. The axing of a dud idea was welcome, but it should not have taken 96 deaths for it to have happened. CCTV had already turned the tide against stadium violence, and by the early 1990s, football fighting was just no longer a cool thing to do. Cards would have made no difference.

The Iron Lady resigned in 1990 and Moynihan scuttled away into the shadows after losing his seat at the 1992 General Election, only briefly reappearing in court in 1996 to claim the title 'Baron Moynihan' after the death of his brothel-keeping half-brother. Football fans were glad to see the back of him.

Perhaps the Celtic associations do have nothing to fear from the passing novelty of a UK team, but being clearly petrified of the unthinkable, they have every right to refuse to participate.

What Moynihan the BOA man fails to understand is that Olympic football has so little prestige compared to the real prizes in the game that the three smaller British associations cannot allow a minor competition they never enter anyway to risk ending their existences.

Against this background, a man with apparently no knowledge of the sport really should back off. Football decisions should be down to football people, and Moynihan is not one of us. If no association apart from the FA wishes to participate in the UK eleven then we can all live with that.

One man who knew how to deal with Moynihan was Brian Clough. Cloughie referred to him as 'The Miniature for Sport' and brought a puppet of him onto television to ridicule. When Moynihan charged onto the field to congratulate Britain's gold medal-winning hockey team at the 1988 Olympics, Clough judiciously pointed out how Moynihan could never again lecture football fans about pitch invasions.

When Lord Justice Taylor killed the ID cards off once and for all, Cloughie concluded,

"I would like to thank Mr Moynihan, and anyone who is above him...which is most of us."

- Sean O'Conor

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