Summer is typically the season for respite, but there will be nothing of the kind this time around given the array of scheduled international tournaments.
Euro 2024 and the Copa America have already been ticked off, but the Olympics are just around the corner.
Women’s football has been a part of the Olympic calendar since 1996 and another highly-anticipated tournament awaits in Paris. The USWNT have dominated the medals table since winning on home soil in ’96 and will be among the favourites to claim their fifth gold medal in August.
Most recent victors Germany and Canada are set to stand in the way of Emma Hayes’ side, as are world champions Spain, but there will be no chance for the Lionesses – who’d have competed as Team GB – to build on their impressive legacy by adding a gold medal to a European Championship and World Cup final appearance.
Here’s why the Lionesses will not be participating at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
The Lionesses qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 off the back of their progression into the semi-finals at the 2019 World Cup. While Sarina Wiegman’s side have been among the most impressive international sides over the past four years, qualification for the 2024 Summer Olympics was based on performances at the 2023/24 UEFA Women’s Nations League.
The two best performers would join hosts France from UEFA, meaning England had to win their League A group to give themselves a chance. The Lionesses, though, lost away to Belgium and the Netherlands to leave them on the back foot heading into the final matchday.
A 6-0 thumping of Scotland handed them a chance, but the Netherlands’ late goal against Belgium cut their deficit to one and they thus qualified as Group A1 winners despite tasting their second defeat of the group stage. The Dutch and Lionesses both finished with 12 points, but the Oranje ended with a superior goal difference of one, courtesy of that late goal.
The Netherlands were subsequently beaten by Spain in the semi-finals and Germany in the third-place play-off, so they also won’t be competing in France this summer.
Between 1976 and 2008, Great Britain did not take a single football team to the Olympics. That changed upon its hosting of the grand event in 2012, with both men’s and women’s teams representing Team GB.
Players were picked from all four Home Nations at London 2012, but FIFA would later state that there would be no Team GB participant at the Olympics unless an agreement was reached between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
After England reached the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup, the Home Nations struck an agreement ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics which saw the Lionesses compete as Team GB. The squad was made up of 19 English players, three Scots and one Welshwoman.
However, Hege Riise’s side could only match the performance from 2012 as they crashed out in the quarter-finals following a bonkers affair with Australia which went to extra-time.
