Gavin McCafferty Former Scotland manager Craig Brown fears Fifa would use a unified British Olympic team as a precedent to streamline world football by combining the home nations.
Gavin McCafferty Former Scotland manager Craig Brown fears Fifa would use a unified British Olympic team as a precedent to streamline world football by combining the home nations.
Brown yesterday helped launch a petition opposing the formation of a Team GB for the 2012 Olympics in London, which will be debated by the Scottish Parliament's petitions committee.
The Scottish Football Association (SFA), along with their Welsh and Irish counterparts, has refused to co-operate with the plan, but the FA has vowed to take part.
The UK Government has won assurances from Fifa that an Olympic team would not threaten the independence of Scotland in the football world. But Brown, the last man to lead Scotland in a major championships, is not convinced.
"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," he 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 not be binding.
"The Scottish national team could disappear altogether and that is horrendous."
Like his former employers at the SFA, Brown does not feel Fifa can promise with any certainty that Scotland's separate identity can be protected. He believes there is a desire within the corridors of power in world football to take away the privileges and form a British team.
"For a start, that's only one vote, at the moment we have a vote each. 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."
Brown also dismissed suggestions that the four nations - England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland - should compete for the right to represent Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 2012.
"That's far too much football for the best players," he said.
"And then they could say right, have a play-off for the European Championship, have a play-off for the World Cup' and only one of the four home nations would go'."
Brown was also dismissive of suggestions that it was unfair to deprive players of competing on such a high-profile global stage.
He views the threat to a separate Scottish national team as a much more serious issue.
