Why isn't Team GB competing in football at the Olympics?

The Paris Olympics are well and truly underway, with 11,040 athletes taking part in 32 sports.

Team GB will be hoping to bring home an impressive tally of medals, however there is one sport where you won't see Team GB play in one particular sport.

Although us Brits love a game of footy, Team GB will not be represented in either the men’s or women’s football tournament - and there's two separate reasons as to why.

Since the 1960s, there hasn't been a men's team for GB - except for the London 2012 Olympics.

Meanwhile, the women's GB team failed to qualify for the Paris games but at the previous Tokyo Olympics they managed to reach the quarter-finals.

But politics does come into play on this issue of Team GB football because if this was a thing there's a "long held fear" among the home nations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that it could put into question or risk each of their teams at an international level, as per The Telegraph.

Independent nations are not recognised by the International Olympic Committee hence why Brits compete as part of Team GB.

This differs from football governing bodies such as Uefa and Fifa as those organisation allow home nations to each have their separate team to compete.

Therefore, the "risk" as previously mentioned is that if they competed in the Olympics as Team GB, there could be a scenario in which they would then have to compete as Team GB in other football tournaments such as the Euros and the World Cup.

For the women's game, there was a change rules to qualify for the Olympics which meant Team GB missed out.

Instead of a team's World Cup performance being the basis of qualification, Uefa now essentially uses the Nations League to determine qualification.

If the previous rules were applied, England's making it to the world cup final to face Australia last year would have earned a place at the Olympics for Team GB.

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