Ryan Nelsen to play at the Olympics

Agree with james dean too (loved your work in Rebel without a cause!)

Also, a lot of Kiwis watching the Olympics will want to watch whatever event NZers are competing in.

This could result in NZ football gaining some more domestic fans by stealth ...

Agree with James Dean as well.

At the Olympics, it is the most watched sport of them all, which shows how huge it really is.

Some of the best scouts pay more attention to this tournament than the other age groups because it shows what players are readily available for to play the prospective club's first team.

After the 82 world cup we have almost everyone of our All White players went to many professional clubs at such a late age, simply because of the exposure even through they lost all three matches in the pool of death. It's not a mickey mouse tournament because outside of the World Cup finals and maybe the confederation cup, it is the next best international football tournament since it is held every four years.

It's can be viewed as the once in a lifetime tournament for the players compare to the World Cup finals because the only second chance you may get will be if you are lucky enough to be one of the three overage players after previously qualifying as a underage player, which has not been done often enough for NZ at this point.

Also, for once ordinary New Zealanders will get to see Ryan play as well as the other 5 All Whites Internationals to combine together with a couple of future All Whites and have a solid footing for the future. The standard in the training and the professional that Ryan himself offers will lead the young side into the right approach and attitude.

This team has a good spine for foundation strength and it would be a solid display that would not embarrass NZ. That is having a forward, midfielder, and defender in the three different areas of the park is important for overall performance.

Compare to the Olyroos, who has their three overage players as all attacking end players (a mistake i think) but not at their defending end. For the Olyroos, they may be create a defensive hole for a great overage player to jump on, so they are going for scoring more than the other team approach. Whether it would work out for them, time will tell.

For us it is a matter of being solid and strong enough and let Killen get on a strikers form against the younger defenders in the opposite team. For the Olywhites, it is a matter of controlling the game enough to feed Killen plenty of ball service as quickly as we can and work off him as well.

Hopefully Simon Elliot can deliver accurate ball service for our midfield and forward attack. It is known that Ryan can merger with the Midfield as well to push for accurate ball service.

The only player I do have a bit of concern is Simon Elliot's match fitness, if he is able to do the hard yards and have a couple of practice games, he may get up to speed. I do think that there is a lot of pressure on his shoulders more than ever. As the midfield engine, if he plays well, the team will play well, if he plays bad, the team will struggle. This could be the make or break for him as he is unattached and needs to show that he is healthy enough to make an impression for another professional club contract at his age. This is the player who I think is more important than ever. Killen and Nelson we know can do it on form and game time, but Elliot has been not getting enough game time with the first team due to injuries and stiff competition for team spots with his former club. We need a midfielder that can do the hard yards. We really need him to mark Rolandiho to reduce his influence on the pitch and let the young Olywhites to have a fighting chance against the underage Brazilians. Even the Brazilian is not not at his best form, he is still the most skillful player at the tournament. Then Nelson can tightly mark Kaka if he runs close enough to the defence, but I would prefer our fast and fitness player to tightly mark him instead so Nelson can control the defence a bit more and only worry about Kaka when his ventures nearer under pressure by our fitness and fast marker.

I have to say that I almost glad we have Brazil first up, because the Brazilians have the tendency to start the tournament slow and it would also wake up our urgency to play better for the other games. If we are solid against Brazil, we should be confident to be even better in the next outing.

Nice posting All White Believer.

So Blackburn can release one of the worlds best defenders pre-season before the premiership, but Phoenix can't release Smeltz and Lochead pre-season before the A-League?

Romanos against Soccer at Olympics

Personally, i think there is a case for the olympics to be shredded right back to basics - who can run the fastest, jump the highest/longest, biff something the furthest and perhaps get to the end of the pool quickest.

This argument is made at every Olympics, no-one has brought a new point up as to why it should or shouldn't be included for about 10 years

When does Nelsen hook up with the squad?

Well, let's see how many make big moves based on their performances at the Olympics, and we can have this discussion again.

This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen or heard.

Yeah that confederations cup is a really prestigious trophy...

Name one that NZ can actually be involved in and it'll be a tad more relevant, I think (hope?) thats what AWB was getting at.

If he was saying that more people care about Olympic football than Euro, well he's on his own. lol.

So what do you think Argentina picking Sergio Aguero, Javier Mascherano and Lionel Messi says about what they think about the tournament? Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us with what you have to suggest that other nations don't take the tournament seriously?

And what relevance does that have at all as to how New Zealand should prepare for this tournament?james dean2008-07-07 09:19:33

Um, Great Britain don't even enter a team?

All this subjective debate about how big a tournament the Olympics is in world terms completely misses the point that for New Zealand - given our standing in world football - it is a big tournament. It's a great opportunity to compete on the world stage, blood some players, get them overseas and used to the whole high-performance environment. If we're serious about qualifying for World Cups then this type of tournament is a great stepping stone.

Quite nicely (apart from Archie being crap).

(a) The Uk are attempting to overcome the numerous political hurdles to get a team entered for 2012, Sir Alex has been mentioned as potential manager

(b) Of course it doesn't matter to the home nations, they've never played in the tournament and they can't enter under their own countries. Poor example

(c) Typical view, if it doesn't matter to England, it doesn't matter. Open your eye, the football world exists outside of Europe, and it matters there, demonstrated by the desire of the overage players to represent their country.

England would have qualified for this tournament (by virtue of qualifying for the semi finals of the European U21 which is the qualifier) but would not have qualified for any of the previous 4 tournaments

Ah, OK, that's how it works. Shows how much attention I pay to all things Olympics.

Well conveniently the tournament they are targeting is London, where they would qualify as hosts.

But yes, that is a major problem for them

just as an aside and back to Nelson, how close do you think he would go to carrying the flag? No-one really sticks out apart from Villi i guess to carry it, maybe Docherty, Kendall again? Villi i would leave till next time after she wins gold here. Cant think of to many other options. Maybe Nelson could be, i guess thats dependent on the team marching in the parade. Interested to know others thoughts? bopman2008-07-08 19:43:00

Maybe even Mark Todd.

I would like to see the Ever-Swindell's carry the flag.

Back in your box Frank.

Just another aside......At a school holiday programme, the sports minded people from the council  running the programme asked the kids what sports would be at the Olympics. Kids put up their hands, one said "soccer" to which the sports leader said "sorry, no". I let them know it was there and we had a mens and womens team going. The next kid put up her hand and said "tennis", the leader said she like tennis but it wasn't an Olympic sport. Corrected again and let her know that Marina's going.

In short, most don't think football and tennis are an Olympic sport despite us having representatives in each. Don't think Ryan will get to carry a flag somehow. 

 

 

[QUOTE=james dean](a) The Uk are attempting to overcome the numerous political hurdles to get a team entered for 2012, Sir Alex has been mentioned as potential manager
QUOTE]

I may have misunderstood but were you criticising Gymnastics being in the Olympics?

Gymanstics is a sport that combines strength, speed, agility, flexibility, dexterity, and mental strength in a way that no other sport can, if anything it is the ultimate Olympic sport. In fact it developed from ancient Greek exercises for soldiers and athletes, and I may be wrong but some of those exercises were possibly part of the ancient Olympics...

RN, or any other oly white wont be carrying the flag...it'd be a safe bet

SiNZ, the UK Olympic committee are very much behind the idea of a mens football team in 2012, the FA are behind it as are the other home nations except Scotland who are dragging the chain.  It's not going to be driven by the clubs who would probably get rid of the World Cup if they could.  It's more than 4 years away so it's not really a burning issue here yet but I'd say it's more likely to happen than not.

Only if the respective FA and Football League bring in new regulations - can you see the club chairman voting that in? The clubs are only legally obliged to release players for their national teams according to their national FA regulations under FIFA. With no UK FA, let alone one affiliated to FIFA, there are no such regulations. Without legal compulsion, I see the clubs providing little cooperation - do you? Essentially, it will be the same deal as with overage players.

I don't know, the chance of actually winning something might make the clubs very willing, at least with U23 players.

It might make the players willing, but how does it make the clubs willing?

Surely, being Brittish clubs they'd want Britain to succeed. Or do brits really have that little confidence in their national teams?

European clubs are far more self-centred than that.

Clubs have to release U23 players for the olympics, whether there is a UK FA or not. If it goes ahead it will be with the backing of each of the respective FAs so releasing the players doesn't appear to be the issue. Getting agreement on how the team will be selected etc will be more difficult. As I said above it's 4 years ahead, I'm sure it's barely registered in most fans conciousness. But to answer your question, I'm sure most fans would be behind the idea, partly because of the novelty factor and also because it is a tournament played at home. In fact, if it went well, I can see it being huge! Of course it could be a complete flop.