2024 Women's Olympic Tournament

So Iceland seem to have a big over-representation of non-whites in the WNT compared to their population.

 

Not really. Almost 20% of Icelandic population are immigrants.

 

Well, I'd leave it to Icelandic people to illustrate that, but @JanBalk was just talking about non-whites, not about immigrants in general and arguably most of Iceland's immigrants are actually white (almost one third of them, for instance, are Polish, so go figure ).

 

1 player out of 23 roster = 4.3% (I assume Sveindís Jane Jónsdóttir)

that according to JanBalk is a big over-representation of non-whites in the Iceland WNT compared to their population.

Let's see:

Population total: 376 248

Icelanders of two Icelandic parents (No foreign background) = 279 236 (75.71% of total)

which leave:

97 012 (24.29% of total) Icelanders with foreign background (Caucasian or non-Caucasian)

1 player out of 23 roster = 4.3%

Representation of 4.3% out of 376 248 population is 16 178

16 178 non-Caucasians in all of Icelandic population would be then an equal
representation with 1 non-caucasian player out of 23 roster.

So basically you're sayin that among 97 012 Icelanders with foreign backround (this numer include immigrants) there isn't as much as 16 178 non-Caucasians... all while foreign-born immigrant communities of Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, China and India alone account in total for over 5500 people (most likely non-caucasian).
And what about non-caucasians form other immigrant communites or from Icelandic mixed famlies?

Stating that Iceland seem to have a big over-representation of non-whites in the WNT compared to their population is weird to the least.

 

Today, women's football remains a restricted discipline; simply put, it remains a white women's sport at the competitive level. A clear contrast to men's football.
Count of non-Caucasian teams in Olympic football:
Women: 2012-6/12 ; 2016-5/12 ; 2021-5/12 ; 2024-7/12 .

2024 Olympic women teams, where 7 of 12 are non-Caucasian:
7 = 2 AFC + 2 CAF + BRA + ARG + FRA
2024 Olympic women teams, where 5 of 12 are Caucasian:
5 = USA + 1 OFC (aka NZL) + 2 UEFA teams + CAN (2023 playoff)

Any questions?

 

@Lohmann , the idea is not forcing UEFA teams to become a racial outlier like FRA.

The big question is: will national federations accept to bring 4 additional non-European teams into the Olympics, in the name of diversity?

Or should the Olympics be packed with more Caucasian teams? Will the IOC agree with that, given their drive to target diverse TV audiences?

edit: 7 non-Caucasian teams for Paris 2024 Olympics:
7 = 2 AFC + 2 CAF + BRA + COL + FRA

 

In the US, looking at the roster for the most recent U20 tournament in France, it is 50-50. Looking at the roster for the WNT CONCACAF finals, it was 15-8.

I am thinking that US women soccer players, over time, will become increasingly more racially diverse.

 

You're probably answering to @JanBalk and not to me.

What I was stating was simply that your previous post where you were writing that 20% of Icelandic population are immigrants was basically a non-answer, since it didn't really address what was being discussed, unless you were going deeper in investigating what "immigrants" meant.

 

Not sure about what the federation would say about it, but my answer is "no". To me the need of diversity doesn't trump the need of an high quality tournament having the best teams represented on just sport's merit.

In my opinion it's the other way around: making football grow in those nations comes first, then, after that, it would be rightful to represent them more at the top stages of the game.

And, since I preemptively smell outrage for my answer, I'll end with a question: what good would it actually be for the sake of diversity if we'd get teams at the Olympics potentially losing games 13-0, as Thailand did at the World Cup, because the level of their football is not there yet? Make them grow first, work at root level: a free-pass for the Olympics would just be handout.

 

2016 Olympic women teams: Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, China
That`s five and you did not include France.

 

I think all confederations + host should be guaranteed 1 slot. The rest should be decided by sporting results. We have a World Cup one year before Olympic Games so we can use the results of the second/third/fourth.. best team of a confederation to determine how many slots a confederation gets.

 

People that states detail fact without source are either liars or arseholes I have learned there are no reason arguing with either.

Btw the WNT represent the CITIZENS of Iceland not the population, so your numbers above is not very relevant.

 

Oh my, someone woke up today with a headache or something.
Calling names?
Really mature mister.

Fact that Iceland WNT recruits from the citizens of Iceland not the whole population is beyond the point when the comparison you made referred specifically to the Icelandic population, not just citizens with Icelandic citizenship.

As for the source blissett provided one during the conversation:
"... Iceland's immigrants..." taken from Demographics of Iceland

Data is there. Rest is just doing the math.

 

FRA did not make the diversity cut in 2016: presented 18 players + 4 alternates: 10 non-caucasians + 12 caucasians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_2016_Summer_Olympics_–_Women's_team_squads#France

Its original Olympic squad was 8:10 in non-Caucasian to Caucasian ratio, until a Caucasian player got injured and was replaced by an Algerian descendant.

I must say that I find interesting these attempts to reclassify FRA as a non-Caucasian team, while conveniently ignoring the big elephant in the room.

 

I agree, discussions about women's football tend to be civilized until the sport is examined for inclusion of non-white players. It is rather unfortunate, as most of us would assume that women's football would welcome such observation.

Giving equal number of Olympic slots per confederation is what IOC wants to do.
Expecting an underachiever like THA to be fast-tracked into the Olympics is not a fair assessment of AFC competitiveness. There are at least 4 AFC teams ahead of THA, in a fight for Olympic slots. Under IOC's plan, 4 AFC teams would not enter the Olympics.

Now, consider BRA at WC vs Olympics: early WC knockout eliminations, repeated Olympic finalist.
Why should BRA be given a chance at Olympic medals, when it does poorly in WC?
Did BRA's Olympic success encourage it to grow women's football?
Is BRA's Olympic slot a *handout*?

 

Brazil is anyway #9 in the FIFA world rankings, mate. Also, there are qualifying processes for the various federations, that can or cannot include results from different tournaments and anyway tend to make sure that you have one of the top nations for each federation qualify for the Olympics on sports merit. You really want to compare that to giving slots just for the sake of diversity?

Also, you should really give me your definition of a "caucasian" team (not that it makes much sense to me, actually). Because if France is your typical caucasian team, then I don't know what to say.

Your previous comment about France tell me that you tend to preemptively box any nation as a representant of a single particular race (I don't even use the word "ethnicity", because that's basically what you're doing), independently from how diverse the actual team are. You go picking France's Olympic roster from 2016 for your particular convenience: did you see the last Euro tournament that finished on Sunday? How can you say that France is fundamentally a "caucasian" team with a straight face? I didn't go check the descents on a case-by-case basis (because I am not obsessed by race as you are), but there were at least 14 players out of 23 who were from African (sometimes North-African, but African nonetheless) origin.

If you ignore that you're simply dishonest, that's all

It tends to be civilized until someone like you comes here with an ideological-warped point of view and insists on everyone bowing to it, despite keeping manipulating the facts to support it. Brazil is on the Olympics for something different from sports merit? France is a "caucasian" team? Ok, go on with your pretentious preaching without me.

Edit: by the way, it sounds ridiculous to me having to use the word "caucasian". Here in Europe, we never use it and we only associate it with the very marginal Caucasus region. This word is actually an American costruct, created to keep talking about "races", when the word "race" wasn't acceptable anymore and was substituted with the notion of "ethnicity", while normally hypocritically keeping all the weight of the concept of race anyway. Just say "white" openly, drop the hypocrisy.

 

It gets embarrassing.
From Wiki:
France named a squad of 18 players and 4 alternates for the tournament, which was announced on 7 July 2016.[17] Prior to the tournament, Laura Georges withdrew injured and was replaced on 18 July 2016 by Sakina Karchaoui, who was initially selected as an alternate player.[18]

Laura Georges is a caucasian player for you? (Karchaouis parents are from Morocco - but this is a minor mistake compared to Georges). This way it`s not surprising you get a caucasian majority while I count a majority of non-caucasian players.

 

Yikes @blissett : "preemptively box any nation", "simply dishonest", "ideological-warped point of view", "manipulating facts", "pretentious preaching", "American construct", "drop the hypocrisy"... why don't we take a step back?

It is normal to read about "American constructs" here in bigsoccer.com, a US-hosted/managed football forum site. Such terms are used frequently across this forum, so not much we can do to accommodate our European friends.

Race is a very real concept here in the Americas. Specifically, "White" encompasses many ethnic groups here in USA:
Many Latinos will self-identify as White, despite their Native American ancestry, which is an old practice from their Latin American countries. Several North-Africans will self-identify as White to differentiate themselves from sub-Saharan Africans. Middle-Easterners will first self-identify as White, instead of Asian.
Hence, the need here in USA to use a separate term to foster race equity: Caucasian, which really translates to White-European.
One of my backgrounds is school district work in the urban Northeast, where our NCAA scholarships are a big deal.

If I were to use White as you suggested, then I would have to reclassify South American teams, who overwhelmingly self-identify as White. This stuff can get serious, when you consider vicious racist attacks suffered by the most dark-skinned member of CHI, during 2022 CA. Even a CHI gov't minister had to step in against that abuse.

So, back to FRA. Racial composition of its Olympic team has shifted over the years, towards a non-Caucasian majority. As @Lohmann pointed out, its 2016 Olympic squad of 18 players had an even split of 9 non-White-Europeans and 9 White-Europeans. That squad could be classified as either Caucasian or not, and it would not change low representation of non-white-European women in world football events.

As my original post indicated, I count its 2024 Olympic team as non-Caucasian, given its current trend. Unfortunately, how much does that advance non-Caucasian representation in women's world football tournaments?

I consider that the Olympics work well as a 2nd-tier world football event, with football development as objective. BRA gets a chance at earning silverware and boosting its WNT, while taking advantage that stronger European teams cannot enter that event in droves.

This is what FIFA does with men's Olympic football. A tournament restricted to squads mostly composed of u23 players, while granting a higher percentage of slots to emerging confederations. It is a good model for developing emerging MNTs, by keeping both Conmebol and UEFA slot allocation in check.

 

And yet you chime in on this thread where, despite the host being American, the majority of the posters were European (look at the last pair of pages: an Italian, a Swedish, a French, a German, a Polish) and, with a patronizing tone, you talk about "accomodating our European friends". We don't need to be accomodated: what you Americans keep doing, and you don't even seem to realize that, is "cultural colonization". You create your personal ideological points of view, then you spread them through to world and you come to us trying to "teach us how we have to think", trying to "civilize" us. The colonial way, no less: we must sure know well what we're saying, since colonialism was invented in Europe.

You would probably be surprised at what we're normally taught in school here in Europe about the concept of "race" and its biological inconsistency, but I won't even start to open this can of worms. The need to thoroughly classify all groups of individuals is another fixation of your culture (as seen, for instance, with the names you need to give to all of the "generations") and it has nothing to do with our European culture: just another example of "cultural colonialism". By the way, this kind of classification is the optimal way to perpetuate differences and hate, not to somehow try to mend them.

Anyway, I'll just conclude that by saying that what makes it impossible for you and me to understand each other is the very premise. You think that promoting diversity is more important than sport's merit, while I think the opposite: that's all our debate in a nutshell, so it's useless to back up your points of view with data (that, by the way, you've been shown being often inaccurate).
To me, the core of sport is a fair and correct competition where the best ones advance to the maximum rewards, so the distribution of the spots for an Olympic women's football competition has to be only be based on the respective current and historical strength of each confederation and on a fair qualification process inside each confederation (or, possibily, for a marginal quota of the spots, between confederations, as it currently happens for the WWC, although this can't be applied to the Olympics at the moment because there are too few spots available to make it reasonable).

Also, promoting a sport (since sport's revenues basically come from the quality of the show that's being offered) goes along with making it a tight and compelling competition (did you watch the last Women's Euro tournament? I suspect you didn't. Because most of the matches from the quarter-finals on were highly contested affairs, a veritable advertising for women's football). How do you obtain such an enticing show? By making the best teams qualify, not by handing out random spots based on different considerations. Or you'll risk having a super-diverse tournament that no-one will be actually interested to.

To me, the top competition have to include the best competitors, no matter what their "race" is. Or, tell me, you would advocate always reserving at least three lanes to white sprinters in an Olympic 100 m dash competition "in the name of diversity"?

 

An European complaining about the threat of US cultural colonialism. Wow.

How quickly we forget that Africa boycotted the 1966 Men's World Cup precisely because FIFA refused to let go of its European colonist buddies, withholding WC slots from Africa and Asia. Its pantomime with 1960s Apartheid South Africa was something else too. Nobody does colonialism like good ol' Europe.

So, Tokyo Olympics, 100m women's tournament, 7 heats/groups of 8 sprinters:
5 groups with 3 Europeans each.
1 group with 2 Europeans.
1 group with 1 European (ISR rep).

A total of 18 European athletes, of which 10 were Caucasian. 6 sprinters from several backgrounds could not advance from their groups, despite having faster times than a Caucasian ITA athlete in group #3. Talk about Group of Life.

Hence, at the 2020 Olympics 100m women's tournament, you had plenty of lanes for European Caucasian athletes. At least they had a chance to compete at the Olympic stage.

Regarding diversity, note how the IOC reserved 10 spots for underachieving nations (3 preliminary heats). Kind of like the 2023 WC playoffs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_–_Women's_100_metres#Heats

 

I claim the right to at least answer for a last time to @bigsoccertst1's nonsense (since, much conveniently, your post just came about an hour after his own, thus basically leaving him the last word), then I won't have anything more to add about the subject.

Yes, wow. Recur to irony as much as you want (you have to, since you have no other argument), but that's exactly your attitude on this thread in a nutshell. I was the first to admit that the European invented the cultural colonialism, but that's exactly what you're doing right now.

You only reason by preconceptions: you've been taught that the Europeans are and will always be the nasty colonialists and the Americans are always the rightful ones and the defenders of the free, so you're unable to recognize cultural colonialism when it's in front of your nose.

You basically claimed that this forum was "American-based", thus implying that it was home soil, and you treated European posters as immigrants from beyond the border. You basically said that we're welcome as long as we behave and we follow the cultural rules set by the Americans that so generously hosted us. Think about it: that's exactly what you said and this premise epitomizes all of your attitude in this discussion.

I was so sure that you was going to answer this way, that I almost wanted to answer already in my previous post, but it would have been unfair and, unlike you, I prefer to listen what my opponent has to say.

First: as you always did here since the beginning, you hand-picked an example that particularly suited your needs.

I don't care about the "Olympic 100 m women's tournament": read what I've written. Can you read? I was talking about the finals. Because that's what can be directly compared with the women's tournament at the Olympics, where just 16 teams are allowed. In track-and-field, the qualification process can happen at the same event as the final (thus the "spots for underachieving nations"), but team's sports don't have this luxury: the qualification process trimming down the field to the number requested for the final phase has to happen years in advance. That's when every nation have their chance, even "underachieving ones". The number of athletes (and consequently of represented nations, including the underachieving ones) in any track-and-field discipline is so much higher than the number of teams allowed in an Olympic team sport's tournament, that the only correct comparison is with a final of track-and-field: that's when we are at the same level (by a sport's results point of view) that has been reached when the final 16 teams of the women's football competition has been selected. Who cares that everyone is represented "in the preliminary heats"!!! As you correctly pointed out, it's like the 2023 WWC playoffs, so something happening before the actual tournament.

So now, I ask you again, since the correct-level comparison (and anyway the one I had asked you about) was the final of the 100 m dash, would you advocate reserving three lanes of that final to white sprinters? And don't pick an example of your personal preference. Let's talk, for instance, about the men's final of 100 m dash in Tokyo: no "caucasian" athletes there, just a Chinese (for your information, the Italian winner was half non-caucasian American). Would you reserve three lanes for whites there? Because that's the equivalent of the final tournament of the women's football competition, not the preliminary rounds!

And you dare to feel offended when you're accused of being dishonest!

 

Understood @bungadiri . We'll respect the original purpose of this thread.

I think the women's Olympic football is fine where is at as a 2nd-tier world tournament. It gives us a chance to see how emerging countries can advance further in competition when the playing field avoids over-representation of one world region.

 

Diversity or the lack there of in women's soccer in the US is also a function of the economic advantages that many racial groups have in the US.

Having your kids develop in elite premier clubs(where the top colleges recruit from) requires an investment of thousands of dollars per year which means that most players entering Div 1 colleges usually come from middle and higher income age groups.

That is why there is a disproportionate number of white and increasingly Asian players at the elite levels of US women's soccer.