OLYMPIC organizers have announced that those who earned their spots for Tokyo 2020 will keep it in Tokyo 2021, which is good news to some. However, some teams are hoping the same will hold true for football.
You see, Olympic football is an under-23 competition. Fifa put up the age limit when they allowed pros in the Olympics and the football body didn’t want the Olympic event to overshadow its signature event, the World Cup. Look at basketball, there was a time when Olympic basketball was more prestigious than the Fiba World Cup with the biggest stars opting to compete in the Summer Games.
But back to football. With the age limit -- the only sport to have one in the Olympics -- football is in a tight spot with the games being postponed to 2021. For most teams, it is normal to field players who are just about to turn 23, and moving the event to 2021 will make some ineligible.
Though there are sometimes changes in the lineup between the qualifier and the Olympic event, these are mainly due to injuries or off-field issues. Coaches, as a rule, generally reward the players’ perseverance and hard work in the qualifiers by letting them keep their spots in the Olympics.
That’s why coaches are clamoring for Fifa to change the age limit from 23 to 24 in the Olympic games and I hope Fifa does the same even if that would make the Tokyo Olympics the “oldest” Olympic football competition in two decades.
In the US, some coaches also want to add another year of eligibility to college players since their season was cancelled and closer to home, I think the coaches in the Manila league will be making such call also since the volleyball, football and other second semester sports are likely to be canned. That won’t hold true for the high school sports, of course, since you can’t expect the graduating high school students to stay another year just to compete.
These are just some of the concerns sports organizers will have to deal with once the situation normalizes and we all hope it normalizes. Of course, they may seem inconsequential in the bigger scheme of things but we are all hoping that the day will return when we will concern ourselves with things other than monitoring the dreaded daily tally.