Does football belong in the Olympics?

It is a question that rears its ugly head every four years and no, it has nothing to do with the mystery of why Hungarians are so good at swimming.

Rather, does football truly belong in the Olympics? Watching the cobbled together soccer conglomerate that is Stuart Pearce’s British men’s squad, an anomaly in a sport where England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete separately at international level and have separate governing bodies, gave further ammunition to the doubters.

Seeing them in action against Uruguay the other night at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium will have turned doubters into committed atheists.