This tends to undermine a suggestion that real soccer fans shouldn’t care about the Olympics at all. There’s a grey scale here. The Olympics are below the Euros and the Copa, but above zero.
The women have no age restriction but as many are now playing for the same clubs as the men will they start having release issues?
It's also harder to get excited about Olympic soccer because it's just 1 of a billion sports going on. The Olympics is massive sports saturation. You only have so much attention and excitement to give. If you forget about or miss the soccer game, it's not all that bad because there's something else to watch. The "cost" of not engaging isn't that high as opposed to missing a Copa or WC match.
Agreed. Except for women's soccer, which only goes back to 1996, the Olympics to me is largely a track meet.
I think soccer fans will care more about the Euros and Copa America while the Olympics has a more general audience who aren’t necessarily soccer fans.
The only "bubble" guy who might arguably be shifted for reasons of development from the Copa 23 to the Olympics is Paredes. Pepi is firmly part of the 23 in any tournament we are trying to win.
I expect that prominent European women's clubs will start to be tougher on player availability for the Olympics. It helps that European countries already have their 2nd major tournament in the European Championship, just like on the Men's side.
I think that's right, but I think the idea that only general sports fans and not "real" soccer fans care about the olympics is wrong. I wonder also if any of the A-team players actively want to go to the Olympics. Take Ream for example. He might understand that getting to 26 is unlikely, that holding on to minutes at Fulham will not depend on getting into pre-season early, and be at a stage where he's starting to see last chances. Maybe he would lobby to go?
I think most players if forced to choose will pick the Copa over the Olympics. And the European clubs won’t release a player for both.
But how much of the general Olympic audience watches Olympic soccer instead of gymnastics/swimming/track?
Like anything in the Olympics, if an American or an American team goes on a run and looks to possibly medal, there's features from NBC, there's focus. I don't expect many people to watch the first game of the group, but if we make to the medal round, it will get promoted and a lot of more casual viewers will turn in. There's also a credibility opponent to getting a medal with everyone, but particularly the more casual fan. Losing early won't do much; but a medal run would garner attention.
I think they’ll watch sports where the US are successful and especially sports where there’s unexpected success. Which a deep run in the Olympics would be.
So who of Wright, Sargent, or Balogun are you leaving off? Or are you taking all 4 of them then who are you dropping?
We can't really find a place for all of Sargent, Wright, Pepi, Balogun, and Vazquez this summer in a way that makes sense. No matter what we do. Three of them go to the Copa team. One goes to the Olympics with Duncan McGuire. But it just takes an injury or issue with one of them, and everything is set up perfectly. So....................I'll worry about it in two months when we have to make this decision. If you put a gun to my head and force me to drop one altogether this summer, then its Vazquez. [And no, I'm not taking two of them to the Olympics. Duncan has been preparing with the U23 team since October. That's his spot.]
I’d actually drop Duncan McGuire from the Olympic team. Cade Cowell can be the backup 9 and with and 18 man roster the backups really need to be guys who can play multiple positions.
This, I mean they've been openly musing about sending Messi, Dibu Martinez, etc. I doubt it happens but there is a lot of interest from the players side at least. That said, Mascherano has done such a bad job of running their youth teams that I wouldn't hold my breath on them being a serious threat unless Diablito Echeverri gets to play consistently and pops off. As for the value of USA trying to stack their own roster over Copa, I just don't see the needle moving that much either on the field or for attention to the sport. I don't think people will care unless we get to the actual final and the Olympic tournament is too much of a crapshoot to gamble on that.
His eligibility for the 2024 Olympics is unclear but interesting from Balogun Folarin Balogun 🇺🇸 recently reflected on his first season with Monaco with Get French Football News, speaking about some struggles and his goals for the future. One interesting thing he mentioned was a desire to compete in the Olympics, which he is age-eligible for this summer. pic.twitter.com/jZ5We5G29A— American Ultras Talk (@ameriultrastalk) April 3, 2024
If we’re not invited to the 2028 Copa America, that’s the Olympics where it makes sense to stack the roster to the fullest extent possible.
Unfortunately, the US has only qualified once in the 20 years prior to that Olympics, so I am not counting on doing well there.
There’s very little thirst for Olympic soccer from the general Olympic audience. And just compare all the empty stands to the Euros or Copa, never mind the WC. It’s cool for us as fans here on BS but it ain’t some needle moving event. Hell, most casual soccer fans won’t even have heard of the players on our roster.
The promising bit of data recently was that our '23 class of U20's was outstanding and thats how we qualified, I think if we keep having qualification come from a tournament like that we might be fine, but otherwise it will be difficult as our best U23's are always going to be Europe and unreleased for qualifying campaigns. What made this past cycle different was Covid necessitating us qualifying from a simpler format, and at the U20 level we've basically been dominant for the past 7 years. Part of me thinks we would be fine, but what I think is really funny and interesting was that after '21, I said I fully didn't give a ---- anymore, and wished we'd just throw our best U20's on the problem having no idea that we'd do exactly that 15 months later. Honestly, if I was the fed, I would try to qualify with our U20/U21's and not with U23's, because we'll just get way more released and more talented players if we go w/the younger pool. Our U23's still in MLS just usually aren't that good. Our U20's and U21's are especially when they're pulled from age 18 to age 20 cohorts. It's just a better idea to try to qualify with younger players.
Maybe it being the first major tournament for the woman's team with Emma Hayes might help throw some interest our way.