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Football at the Olympics is a little bit like inviting George Clooney out for a night with your mates. Everyone quickly recognises the fact that he is cooler, wealthier and far more handsome than the rest of you. And while he may draw some attention to your crew, in your heart of hearts you know he doesn’t quite fit and so, knowingly or not, you ostracise him and he ends up feeling uncomfortable. Knowingly or not, you knock him down a few pegs.

Football got the same treatment in Beijing. In terms of aggregate audience, it blew all the other sports out of the water, but that did not stop it from being treated like some kind of interloper. While we were inundated with heart-warming stories about how hard gymnasts, skeet shooters and badminton players worked to attain their Olympic goals and how grateful they all were to their respective federations who got them training facilities, sponsorships and time off work, you got the sense that football’s powers-that-be wished this tournament had never taken place.

I’m not just talking about the clubs, who have their own reasons for feeling this way. Consider the national FAs: each was allowed to select up to three “overage” (ie, over 23) players, but most of them did not bother to take up their full allocation. Thus Brazil relied on Ronaldinho alone (and, as we know, this version of Ronaldinho is a far cry from the original). Italy’s reinforcement was not Luca Toni or Alessandro Del Piero or even Filippo Inzaghi, but Tommaso Rocchi, Serie A’s answer to Andrew Johnson. Even Argentina, the nation that takes Olympic football most seriously, did not fill its allocation, limiting itself to Juan Román Riquelme and Javier Mascherano.

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The organisers, perhaps not wishing to distract attention from the supposedly “pure” Olympic events, did their part to make the game feel unwelcome. The final at Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium was scheduled for 1pm on Saturday, which meant it was played in other-worldly conditions: 90 per cent humidity and a searing heat that hit 42C (107F).

In those circumstances, you can only praise the referee, Victor Kassai, of Hungary, who had the common sense to stop play on two occasions, allowing the players to rest and rehydrate. Such “time-outs” may not be part of the laws of the game, but they were the right thing to do in conditions that Diego Maradona, present as ever in the stands, described as “inhuman”.

As it happened, Argentina took the gold, beating Nigeria 1-0 in the final.

It wasn’t a sparkling performance given the weather, but the Argentinians were nevertheless worthy winners, having dispatched Brazil, their most serious competition, in the semi-finals with an emphatic 3-0 victory.

In some ways it was fitting that such an unreal tournament should have been won by Argentina, who can only be described as an “unreal” side. Not just for the technical ability – with a front three of Riquelme, Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero the talent gap was stunning – but also because they looked like throwbacks to a different era.

In this day and age when strength and athleticism are held in such high regard, you don’t see too many teams fielding such a Smurf-like side. Just three players in Argentina’s starting XI were as tall as six feet: Sergio Romero, the goalkeeper, Ezequiel Garay, a central defender, and Riquelme, who is hardly the most physical player you will see. Up front, Messi, 5ft 7in, led the line alongside Agüero, 5ft 8in, hardly the proto-typical little-and-large strike partnership (though, I suppose, one is bigger than the other).

Yet if they lacked a bit of size, Argentina had bundles of creativity, flair and skill and, in that sense, were a joy to behold, especially because they were so unlike the “modern” footballing sides we see in the European game.

The row over Olympic football is set to roll on to London 2012. Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, has indicated that it may make sense to get rid of the overage players and simply turn it into a straight under23 tournament. There’s a part of me that agrees with him: why include overage players if the clubs will just throw their toys out of the pram and national FAs will not take up the full allocation? Then again, with every sport scheduled for the 2012 Olympics with the exception of boxing allowing the very best in the world to participate, why should football continue to be different? Is it really some kind of Clooney effect?

And another thing . . .

Challenging times ahead

So now AC Milan have not one but two “redemption projects” on their hands: Ronaldinho and Andriy Shevchenko. Two former European Footballers of the Year who have fallen on hard times and, at 28 and 31 respectively, may yet regain their magic. But also two men who, between them, will earn in excess of £13 million this season, which is one heck of a gamble.

Especially because the rest of Milan’s strikeforce looks either a bit too old (Filippo Inzaghi is 35), too young (Alberto Paloschi and Pato Alexandre are 18) or too unproven (Marco Borriello’s numbers from last season – 19 goals in 35 matches for Genoa – appear gaudy until you consider that he had managed to score only six in 66 Serie A appearances over five years before that).

Oh, and Kaká is injured and will not return before October at the earliest. Might be a good idea for Milan fans to reach for that rabbit’s foot right about now . . .

Sommeil shock

David Sommeil, the Valenciennes player, is in a stable condition after suffering a heart attack last Wednesday. The former Manchester City defender is 34 and a professional athlete. How is it that in this age of sports science and expensive team doctors this kind of thing goes on?