Why? Its only the Olympics. European teams don't take the Olympics seriously and the tournament already takes longer than the Olympic Games themselves. I think it would make more sense to abandon the Olympics and have Under 18 and Under 21 tournaments every two years.
they can't even fit into the schedule with 16 teams, so a 24 team tournament, lasting a month, is a non-starter.
ROTFL. The only reason "european teams don't take the olympics seriously" is because they aren't good enough to actually count. Your comment is like saying that OCeania don't take the Olympics seriously because they don't win the Olympic gold Besides pretournament comments by the Spanish and British team show that they sure as hell treated it seriously. They just weren't good enough and got outplayed.
I think "not taking it seriously" is a bit miselading. The players certainly don't go out and give half-hearted performances as if it was just a pre-season friendly, but on the other hand it doesn't carry any sort of gravitas. I think saying players/countries lack determination would be nearer to the mark. If you really take a tournament such as this seriously, you don't throw a team together two weeks before the thing starts and hope for the best.
The reason why this happens is because of the Olympic format, not because of lack of interest in winning gold. Spain had the best U23 possible minus Thiago Alcantara. That says a lot about how serious they were. The simple truth is that at youth level European teams just aren't good enough. Notice the Europeans hardly ever perform at the WYC and the U17 WC.
No. It's supposed to be played in an Olympic "city", not country. 16 teams are already too many. They should have only 8 teams. Also, will they play games every 2 days? You really need 3 days of rest to fully recharge a soccer body.
Why would the Olympic format dictate that you don't start preparing until a couple of weeks before? Some continents have proper qualifying tournaments, allowing qualifying teams to have built up a good understanding. Other continents don't decide to put on a major tournament a month earlier than the Olympics. And it's not about a lack of interest in winning gold, but a lack of priority. Yet these same "not good enough" players somehow acquire talent later on?
Because the clubs won't release you. These player are not as gifted in pure skill, but they make up for it in general tactical play, especially in regards to defence. This makes them 'level' out with the far more talented ie. Brasilian teams.
Not only "acquire talent" but acquire enough of it to pretty much dominate at the senior level along with Bra/Arg.
Yes, that has been the case in all recent Olympics. The '84 LA Olympics even held games as far away as Boston. Otoh, I do agree that trying to accommodate a 24 team tournament over a 16 day Olympics is pushing things too far.
Or make it a pure U23 tournament like it used to be (?). The current thee over-age players stuff is just a mess.
To answer the question mark the Barcelona Olympics were the only one where it was pure under 23. Since then we have qualifying with under 23, and add 3 overage players in the final tournament. A real dog's breakfast IMO.