Brown in independence plea

Former Scotland manager Craig Brown has called for all four home nations to be represented separately in the 2012 Olympic football tournament.

Brown yesterday launched a petition against the formation of a unified British team at the London Games.

As it stands, only English players would represent Team GB as the governing bodies in the other three home nations have refused to become involved.

But Brown, who led Scotland to finals of the European Championships and World Cup, believes Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales should all take part.

“There is a forthcoming, important FIFA meeting and I think, if they realise this is not going to happen, they may reassess the football in the Olympics,” Brown said.

“It would be great if they said ’we’ll invite you all to take part, each country, since it’s based in the UK’.

“Why could the Olympic people not do that?

“The other compromise is not acceptable to me, that is to have a play-off and the winning country goes.

“That’s far too much football for the best players.

“And then they could say ’right, have a play-off for the European Championships, have a play-off for the World Cup’ and only one of the four home nations would go.”

The UK Government have recently received assurances from FIFA a unified British team would not threaten the independence of the four nations.

But FIFA president Sepp Blatter has previously been quoted saying the opposite and Brown is unconvinced by the apparent guarantees.

“I’m opposed to it because, first of all, I’m a very patriotic Scot and I want to retain the autonomy of the Scottish national team,” Brown said.

“I don’t want it to be diluted in any way through a combination of other countries.

“The second reason is that I feel there is the danger in the future.

“Although we’ve got assurances now from FIFA that they won’t combine them permanently, in the future that decision of the present FIFA board won’t be binding.

“The Scottish national team could disappear altogether and that is horrendous.”

The former Clyde and Preston manager insists there are those in positions of power in the world game who would be only too happy to see that happen.

“For a start, that’s only one vote; at the moment, we have a vote each,” Brown said.

“Also, there are 208 countries in FIFA, it would streamline their operation a wee bit.

“The old Yugoslavia split into five, I think the USSR became 15 teams.

“I strongly suspect that FIFA would like to streamline their operation a bit more, reduce the number and one way of doing it would be to get rid of four and make it one with GB. We don’t want that.”