Why Men's Football Should Remain An Olympic Sport
And why it's OK for association football to not be the Main Character, for once.
While Olympic men’s football might not be as high profile or as lucrative as the sport’s other international tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup, the European Championship and Copa America, there is still a place for it at the Games.
There is no harm in football taking a back seat once in a while, blending in with other sports as part of a wider event rather than smothering them as it can do at most other points in the sporting calendar.
At the same time, not having men’s football at the Games would leave a hole.
Once the laws of association football were established around the world in the late 1800s, and nations began to field teams to represent them, the popularity of international football steadily grew. The Olympic Games were one of the first manifestations of this as an organised global international tournament.
As it was held as an unofficial Olympic sport or as exhibition games between club sides at the Olympics in 1896, 1900, and 1904, the first Olympic men’s football tournament with representative national teams was the 1908 London Olympics. The 1900 and 1904 editions are recognised by the International Olympic Committee, but participating nations were represented by club sides on both occasions.
Regardless of which of these is officially considered the first, the Olympic football tournament is older than the FIFA World Cup (first held in 1930), and older than the famously old Copa America (1916). It is even older than the U.S. Open Cup (1913/14).
The World Cup itself was introduced partly as a result of the popularity of football at the Olympic Games and has now grown into FIFA’s lucrative footballing behemoth.
Football matches at the Olympics still sell out and make money for the organisers, but the more understated, less commercial, relatively unfamiliar nature of these games contributes to the overall variety of sports at the Olympics without overwhelming the event.
A big-money football league season or international tournament can flood the sports media. Even the most uneventful matches can get pages of coverage.
In terms of football’s place within the media landscape, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the way the Olympics are covered, with the increased variety of sports being embraced by readers and enjoyed by writers.
This variety is also evident within the football tournament itself. The restriction on squads to players under 231, with exceptions for up to three overage players, can produce an intriguing dynamic.
Those young players can use the tournament to increase their profile, while the handful of older players can strive towards a unique, once-in-a-lifetime achievement.
Olympic football is also held at venues across the host country, not just in the city bearing the name of that particular summer Olympics, which helps spread the atmosphere of this sporting festival around the country.
If that host country is an established football nation, it is also a chance to reinforce that identity. If it sees itself as an up-and-coming football power, it is a chance to show as much.
Brazil, for example, didn’t win an Olympic football tournament until 2016, when it hosted the Games in Rio de Janeiro. This was a big deal for Brazil, as despite having won more World Cups than any other nation, and regularly picking up Copa America titles, it craved the Olympic gold missing from its collection.
Losing out to Mexico in the final of the 2012 London Olympics only furthered that desire.
Brazil eventually winning gold in 2016 went some way to making up for its failure to win a World Cup on home soil in 2014, and for many of those players, winning Olympic gold will be the pinnacle of their careers.
The Rio Olympics will go down as one of the highlights of the career of one of Brazil’s best players in recent times, Neymar, who, in the final against Germany, scored during regular time and went on to score the winning penalty in the subsequent shootout.
Brazil went on to win again in Tokyo in 2020, but the lack of dominance of the usual names in this tournament is another of the things that makes it a worthwhile exercise.
There are regular complaints that the more established international tournaments, whether club or national teams, can be predictable due to the uneven distribution of global wealth.
The Olympic football tournament can sometimes go against this. There have been 19 different gold medalists in Olympic men’s football while there have only been eight different World Cup winners.
Hungary’s Golden Team of the 1950s didn’t manage to win the World Cup, but it did win Olympic gold in Helsinki in 1952.
One of the great goalscorers of his time, Sándor Kocsis, finished the tournament with six goals, one behind top scorer Branko Zebec of Yugoslavia, while Ferenc Puskás scored in the final against Yugoslavia.
Other names synonymous with Hungary’s Golden Team of that era—József Bozsik, Nándor Hidegkuti, Gyula Grosics, and Zoltán Czibor—each picked up gold medals.
No African team has ever won the World Cup, but two have won Olympic gold. The Nigerian gold medalists at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics featured Jay-Jay Okocha, Celestine Babayaro, Daniel Amokachi, and Nwankwo Kanu, who scored a Golden Goal to defeat Brazil in the semifinal.
Four years later in Sydney, Cameroon replicated the success of their neighbours, defeating a Spain team that featured Xavi and Carles Puyol thanks to a goal from Samuel Eto’o and a successful penalty shootout following a 2-2 draw.
The heavy workload on players in modern football can lead to relative unfamiliarity in some of the squads, which again is refreshing in a sport where there are fewer and fewer undiscovered players.
Many of the reasons given for removing men’s football from the Olympics such as the lack of big names, the subsequent lower profile of the matches, and it not being the Main Character of the Games, might actually be the best arguments for it to remain.
Part of the reason for this is that FIFA doesn’t want the men’s Olympic football tournament to compete with or overshadow the FIFA World Cup.