Why do football and tennis have no place at the Olympics?

You want to watch the world play football on tv- watch the World cup!

Want to see Murray, Federer, Djokovic on tv etc- Watch any Open. In fact, in the past 3 months I recall seeing Murray and Federer in an Open Final... on the BBC... being played in London.

The Olympics should really be the highest stage to do your sport. If it isn't, it shouldn't be in the Olympics.

Not to mention they are boring and played by professionals)

I'm of the same thought, if the Olympics isn't the pinnacle of your sport, you shouldn't be in it.

The Queen has an excellenmt German ancestry so he probably felt quite at home

and the Guy that competes in the exciting sport of running in a straight line for 10 seconds he is a plumber by day then i take it.........

what a bizzare thing to say....


Tennis to me has sat perfectly well within the Olympics football hasnt.

The thing with the football though is that it isn't footballs best athletes, it's their best under 23's (or what ever age it is), it takes all the sheen off it.

What about boxing? Would the Olympics be the pinnacle for many of these sports if they had more coverage than they currently get? Football's the most popular sport in the world, who's to say that these Olympics aren't the pinnacle for some of those players? Will it get any better for the Senegal team? The Japanese? They all give their all, they've all worked incredibly hard to get there and the game is played in pretty much every country in the world.

For me, 'The Olympic Spirit' can't be summed up in one sentence or meaning. It means many things and I think football can be a part of the Olympic spirit. There are many things that limit its progression as a 'great' event (timing, clubs paying wages etc.), but I still think it's a good event and does more good than harm.

How awesome is Bolt (if a posing pr1ck)
He dawddled over the line in his semi.
Bar him false starting, the gold medal is nailed on. Mystic Goldblatt says that Blake wont get within .15 (which is an eternity in top class sprinting, providing an ease down) of Bolt.
Different league

It was a half cheeky addition that I edited in later.

It relied heavily on playing up to the old independent school belief that amateurism was better (which is still technically true in an Olympic sense-if impossible to actually endorse) and the fact that professional footballers are, to paraphrase what someone in this thread said, 'unskillful and overpaid'. I was going to include a reference to rugby union being superior to rugby league; but I thought it over indulgent.

However, I must stress that the difference in the degree of professional status of, say, Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hosking when compared to Ryan Giggs is quite far, you must admit.

It was a clumsy reference but I did it quickly and cheekily. Shame you missed it.

It's an interesting thought problem

In your hypothetical universe where everything gets stupidly high coverage, it is difficult to say for which sports the Olympics will be the highest pinnacle. What I do know, however, is that the World Cup, Euros, African Cup of Nations and many other competitions are much bigger, just on a national level, than the Olympic Football. In fact, you start to sum up quite nicely why that is the case, so I think you know that I, and many others who agree, are correct.

If we were to accept that suddenly the Olympics was no longer the highest pinnacle in air rifle shooting, then it could be replaced. It has happened before. I would welcome a return for poetry or, if I am being serious, tug of war. However, that isn't going to happen.

As a slight aside you have forced, away from this particular discussion, I'd wager Senegal beating France, the world cup champions, in the world cup is still talked about today.

I know why people don't like the football being at the Olympics. You list some of the reasons, others include they are already well paid/publicised so they should be exempt from the Olympics, which should be all about the sporting pinnacle for many. IMO, the Olympics should be about unifying fans using sports from around the world. Football's the biggest sport around, although it's sad we don't get to see the best footballers (for varying reasons), I still don't think it should be dismissed as an Olympic event. For me, one of the best things about the football being there is the way it's played all around the nation, it makes it more accessible for fans that might not be able to get down to London. The already bloated footballing calendar means it's probably too late to truly make the football at the Olympics a major event, but I still think it's good and brings a lot to the Olympics.

Listening to our winning athletes makes me realise even more that footballers are overpaid, disinterested primadonnas. Worst example of any sportsman.

This 'highest pinnacle' stuff is a bit misplaced, for me. I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of sports represented in the Olympics have their own World Championships, and I'd similarly speculate that achieving a medal in these competitions would be a great achievement for the participants concerned. Is it only the weight of history, or the fact it's a massive multi-sport event, or the enormous publicity that makes an Olympic medal 'better' than a World Championship one?

The anti-football thing grates, too. Just because loads of high profile English footballers are arrogant s doesn't automatically mean the Olympic football tournament is worthless. Plenty of countries take it seriously - the Team GB football lot were on a loser from the start whatever they did because these islands don't (more accurately, can't) enter a side in normal circumstances, thus the pervading wisdom is that Olympic football isn't worth bothering with, because Eng-er-lund have never been in it.

As a further aside, Greg Rutherford is a 'failed' footballer, as is Adam Gemili, and to some extent, so is Mo Farah. Ben Ainslie even said he started sailing because he lived in an isolated area where there was nobody to kick a football around with.

Dropped lucky then, didn't they?