Spaniards set to serve up tasty treat in Olympic event at Hampden Park

OLYMPIC organisers have been venturing recently that modest ticket sales for the football tournament fixtures that Hampden is to host would pick up once the game programme was known. They certainly will for the bonanza of football Scotland’s national stadium will stage on Thursday 26 July that was thrown up by draw made at Wembley yesterday.

For the Scottish public have been chucked a bone of the juiciest variety with everyone’s favourite football national Spain meeting Japan that afternoon, a match double-header on the day completed by Honduras facing Morocco immediately afterwards.

The opportunity to see the fledging performers of a nation currently world and European champions in the under-23 tournament should ensure that some of the, admittedly pricey, admission fees are paid by respectable numbers of Scottish football supporters.

It may be a source of consternation to Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson that his goalkeeper David de Gea is among those expected to feature for Spain, who qualified for the London Olympics with the help of Chelsea playmaker Juan Mata. The 24-year-old wants to be involved in the games despite the fact it could take his game count for the season approaching the 70-mark. How many punters will want to be involved in the other men’s group game, which will see Egypt take on Belarus on August 1, remains to be seen, meanwhile.

Hampden has been well-served by the draw for the women’s tournament also with the USA, who took gold in the previous games, playing two of their group games in Glasgow. They are first up at Scotland’s national stadium, facing France on 25 July before meeting Colombia at the ground three days later.

In all, Hampden will host eight games, but the real intrigue for a suspicious Scottish populace will be in whether any of their countryfolk turn out for Stuart Pearce’s Team GB. At the moment Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Steven Fletcher, exiled from the Scotland international set-up for more than a year because of a breakdown in his relationship with Craig Levein, seems the best bet. When it comes to the women’s team, Arsenal’s Scot Kim Little could be a key figure.

Yet the concept of the four home nations uniting for a unique international football tournament staged on British soil seems to bring football patriots this side of the border out in hives over the fact they have convinced themselves, somewhat fancifully, that Fifa will see the exercise as an excuse to campaign for an end to Scotland’s football independence.

Some ill-considered pronouncements from Pearce, who just happens to be the current acting England manager, have hardly helped engender enthusiasm for a British Olympic football side in Scotland. Team GB were drawn with Senegal, Uruguay, United Arab Emirates in the men’s event, which lacked the sparkle of the women’s group which sees the British entrants pitted against Brazil, New Zealand and Cameroon, with the New Zealand encounter two days before the opening ceremony.

In terms of the men, however, it is not just United manager Ferguson, who will also lose Javier Hernandez to Mexico, who see the tournament as only a nuisance. In attempting to promote its place yesterday Pearce showed an ignorance of why players may not be willing to participate. He claimed all those involved would miss with their clubs were pre-season friendlies, perhaps ignorant that such as James Forrest, one of 80 players on Pearce’s shortlist, said at the weekend he felt he would reluctantly have to miss out if asked because Celtic have Champions League third-round qualifiers on 31 July and the following week. Other Scottish and one English club will be involved in Europa League qualifiers at that time but the scheduling clash seems to have passed Pearce by.

“I am acutely aware that club managers have a duty of care to their individual clubs,” said Pearce. “But once the tournament starts, excitement will be generated and people will see the greater good it will do for the individual players and the feelgood factor it brings. Plus we will be returning the players to their clubs before the season starts, so all they will be missing are pre-season friendlies. If I was a player, I would much prefer to be playing at Old Trafford, Wembley and the Millennium Stadium, competing for a medal and then going back to my club. The lift that would give me would be fantastic.”

Pearce maintained no pressure had been applied to him to give his squad, which he will name in June, a true league of nations look, a view echoed by women’s coach Hope Powell. “I have 80 names on a shortish list and from that I will pick 18 players and four to go on standby,” said Pearce, who must surely be under presure to pick David Beckham, who he will travel out to watch play for LA Galaxy, as one of three over-agers given Beckham’s profile and role in delivering the Games to London.

“It is of no consideration to me what nationality players are. I will pick the strongest squad possible. They are all very talented but I want to bring a squad together I think could bring us a gold medal.”

A gold medal that wouldn’t spark street parties in Scotland, it is fair to say.