British sports fans hoping to cheer on a combined soccer team at the London 2012 Olympics look like being disappointed after an apparent U-turn from Sepp Blatter.

The FIFA president’s advice at the weekend, when he urged the four home nations to select only English players for a British 2012 Olympics team, would make a mockery of the Games. As Andrew McNair writes at Bleacher Report: “It’s almost funny, but I’m not laughing!”

In every other sport at the Olympics,athletes from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England compete under the British flag. Sadly, it seems soccer will not conform.

Previously, Blatter had gone on record saying that a Great Britain team could play at the 2012 Games without any danger of the individual associations losing their status in world football.

However at the weekend he said: “They should choose a solution which will not harm the special privileges they hold and should enter only a team composed of players from England.”

Those comments will likely put the final nail in the coffin of an idea that would have allowed for an Olympic celebration of the game in the islands where it began.

Surely it would be good for the Olympics, and world soccer, for a one-off British soccer team to compete for gold medals every four years, and what better place to start it than London?

FILE PHOTO: FIFA President Sepp Blatter attends a news conference in Doha, February 11, 2008. REUTERS/ Fadi Al-Assaad