Overage Player Farce - Is It Really For The Good of the Game?
by: AntoniodaSilva |
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The Olympic Games are now less than a month away, as is the start of the football tournament which will be held in various cities around China. Apart from the World Cup, the Olympic tournament provides the most useful indication of the strength and potential of many national teams coming into the next 2 World Cups, in this case, 2010 and 2014 in South Africa and Brazil respectively. The Olympic tournament has a rich history, being the first major international tournament preceding even the World Cup. In fact, it was the success of this tournament that propelled FIFA to organise a world tournament of its own, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The emergence of the World Cup in 1930 logically led to the decline of the Olympic tournament, not just in popularity but in prestige. FIFA's decision to limit the tournament to amateurs contributed to this decline, but at the same time, it had no choice since the prestige of its own World Cup had to be kept.
Presently, only players below the age of 23 can take part and this was done in order to reflect other FIFA youth tournaments such as the under 20's and under 17's. Notwithstanding, FIFA permits teams to have 3 overage players if they choose to. Many are of the opinion, including he who write this, that this is completely unrequired and does not comply with the objectives of such a tournament.
Now, before everyone starts writing their responses to this article, let?s analyse the reasons behind the creation of this rule as well as what it (supposedly) contributes and what it has (supposedly) contributed.
The rule was put into place at the same time as the under 23 rule in order to give all teams the chance to compete equally, as opposed to the previous rule where only amateurs could participate, and hence the true strength of the international game was not represented. However, this doesn?t address the merits of having overage players at the Olympics. What are the merits of letting teams have them?
From the commercial point of view, it assures great publicity and coverage of the tournament as most overage players are seasoned internationals / professionals, and the presence of players of the calibre of Ronaldinho, Robinho, Messi and Riquelme will ensure that the tournament isn?t covered as some second-rate tournament (which it is in reality). So money and coverage seems to provide a tempting motive for allowing overage players. Apart from that, coaches will tell you that young players will learn much more and much quicker by playing alongside seasoned professionals. The overage rule provides a great opportunity for teams to help their younger players graduate from inexperienced players to experienced, confident professionals. Both of these reasons seem convincing as to why overage players should play at the Olympics.
However, increased coverage and pleasing national football coaches has taken precedence at FIFA when planning youth tournaments. It may be ridiculous to consider the Olympic tournament a youth tournament but when put aside the World Cup, it certainly does possess such characteristics.
All youth tournaments have the characteristic of being restricted to certain age groups meaning that participation in such tournaments is restricted to, in 99% of cases, to just one. As a result, players tend to only play at an Under 17 and 20 tournament once in their lives, making them more competitive rare occasions. All of which, fits in well with the spirit and purpose of football and sport in general. The Olympic Games is no different and giving players the chance to play there more than once is wrong, which is why the overage rule should be scrapped for good.
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About the Author
Author Antonio da Silva is one of the chief writers of SportsNewsFootball.com, a leading sports news football website renowned for its fearless and critical analysis of the major issues affecting the beloved game of football.
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