Paris Games 2024: Welcome to weird world of men's soccer at Olympics

Kylian Mbapp wanted to be there. France coach Thierry Henry wanted it too.

In the end, not even French President Emmanuel Macron could pull enough strings to free up his country's finest soccer player to compete in the Paris Games.

Welcome to the weird world of men's Olympic soccer.

The world's most popular sport occupies a strange space at the Games confused by compromises and contortions that appear designed to ensure it remains a part of the roster so long as it provides the least possible disruption to teams, players and authorities, whose priorities lie elsewhere.

It's become a complete mishmash over the years from being something that was quite important... to something that quite a lot of people would like scrapped because the calendar is so clogged up, soccer author Steve Menary told The Associated Press.

Men's soccer has been part of the Olympics since the 1900 Games, also in Paris. The only time it hasn't featured since then was in Los Angeles in 1932 to help promote the newly conceived World Cup.

Wind the clock forward and the World Cup is now arguably the biggest sporting event on the planet.

Olympic soccer pales in comparison and a gold medal simply isn't the ultimate prize for fabulously wealthy players already caught up in tensions between club and international obligations and the battle to control ever-limited gaps in the calendar.

The result is an international soccer tournament unlike any other, with exceptions and caveats shoe-horned in at all angles.

Football is the world's global ritual, David Goldblatt, author of The Games A Global History of the Olympics, told the AP.

The balance of power and money and influence between football and every other sport combined and FIFA and the IOC has just tipped decisively in favour of football in the last 20 years.

Once upon a time, the Olympics could have claimed to be the greatest sporting show on earth.

While that may still be the case for track and field and myriad other events, in terms of men's soccer, it is firmly in the shadow of the most popular competitions like the World Cup, Champions League and Premier League.

It means assembling a squad to play at the Games is not as straightforward as picking your country's best players. Mbapp is a case in point.

I have always had the same ambition," the World Cup champion said in March. "I have always said that I wanted to go, but it doesn't depend on me.

And, this is where it gets tricky.

An Exception

It's ironic that Barcelona fought so hard to stop Messi from competing, given the Spanish Football Federation compels its teams to allow Spanish players to participate in the Games.

For Tokyo in 2021, Spain included six members of its squad that had been involved in the European Championship earlier that summer. Barcelona Midfielder suffered injury problems after doubling up at the last Euros and Olympics and played close to 70 games that season.

CongestionWorld players' union FIFPRO has raised concerns about the demands on players in an ever-congested calendar.

Following the mid-season World Cup in 2022 it said that 43% of players surveyed had experienced extreme or increased mental fatigue.

Professional footballers are playing too many games, Goldblatt said. There is absolutely no shortage of football tournaments both meaningful and entertaining.

A Compromise

While another team sport such as basketball will bring together the NBA's finest players and famously produced the Dream Team at Barcelona in 1992, men's soccer has had to go a different route.

A compromise, likely intended to avoid clashes with club teams, reached in 1992 made the tournament age-restricted to under 23s. That in itself is something of an oddity, given FIFA's only age-restricted World Cups are for U17s and U20s. The IOC has voiced concerns over FIFA's attempts to expand the popularity of the World Cup at the expense of other events.

It is hard enough getting the stars to show up as it is given the calendar issues, Goldblatt said. I think that was just 'Lets get some stars in.' It's a sort of cobbled together thing.

The problem with a catchment of U23 also is many players by that age would already be established at top teams around the world and at the international level.

Simpler Times

Men's soccer used to be an amateur event, but that led to problems because different countries had different ideas about what it was to be an amateur.

Everyone had different rules. None of which matched up, said Menary, author of GB United? British Olympic Football and the End of the Amateur Dream.

In his book, Menary recounts how Britain played Italy at the Rome Games in 1960.

The Italian team, their rule was if you are under 21 you couldn't be a professional, he said. The Italian U21 team had some of the best players Italy have ever had.

The Teams

While some of soccer's most powerful nations, such as Argentina, France and Spain are in the field of 16 teams at the Games, the likes of Mali, Dominican Republic and Guinea are less obvious qualifiers.

The United States men's team is back for the first time since 2008.

Brazil winner of the last two editions didn't qualify.

Britain, which won three of the first four editions, no longer enters a men's team, with suggestions in the past that doing so could jeopardize the independent statuses of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Britain does, however, enter a team into the women's event and made an exception for the men at London 2012.