Overage Players Farce – Is it really for The Good of the Game?
by Martin Sejas
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.
As the result of the creation of the World Cup, the Olympic tournament has over the years become devalued, and FIFA has contributed to this by imposing age restrictions and other types of controls. All of which is perfectly understandable, given that you would want to damage the prestige of the World Cup.
Today, the Olympic football tournament is restricted to players under the age of 23, which is ideal given that it fits in well with other FIFA under age tournaments such as the U/20s and U/17s. However, teams are also allowed to include up to 3 overage players in their teams and this is something that many, if not all teams, choose to exploit. This rule is, according to many, including this author, unnecessary and actually prohibitive to the purpose of the football tournament.
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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.
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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.
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Nevertheless, under the lure of TV money and satisfied coaches, FIFA seems to have forgotten the roots of its youth tournaments. Now, the Olympic tournament may not be a youth tournament in the traditional sense of the word. Nobody seems to connect the word youth with a 22 year old player. But it is essentially a youth tournament when compared to the World Cup which is open to any and every age. And the main characteristic of a youth tournament is its exclusivity. A young player growing up, knows that he will only get 1 chance to play in the U/17 tournament and 1 chance of playing in the U/20 tournament (I know there have been cases of players participating of more than one of each, but these are very rare). However, any player can grow up knowing that if they miss out on the Olympics, they may still be able to play in it in the future due to the overage rule. The prestige and exclusivity of the tournament is lost. The reason that was driving these players disappears. This is not what football is about. We all know that football is about taking your chances and the Olympic Games should not be any different.
