AHC: make Olympic Football/Soccer a bigger deal

[SealTheRealDeal]

Using ice hockey as a point of reference: Olympic Ice Hockey is the most prestigious international ice hockey tournament. Achieving gold there is typically considered to be a much greater achievement than winning the IIHF's World Championship. Further, with the exception of instances like last year where the NHL forbid its players from going to the Beijing Olympics, the various national teams have little difficulty temporarily luring top talent away from the NHL and KHL for the Olympics, something they struggle to do for the World Championships.

In contrast Olympic football/soccer is basically a weird junior series. Further, falling on the same 4-year schedule as UEFA means it isn't even the biggest football tournament of its year. A kick-ball obsessed country like the UK can't even be bothered to put together an Olympic squad if they aren't the host nation.

With a PoD after the Olympics allow pro athletes in 1986 is there anyway to make it a genuine rival to the FIFA World Cup, or at least a firm #2 behind the World Cup?

 

[Intosh]

It is not possible:

- the Olympic Games last 15 days.

- the Football World Cup last one month, you need this time to play a maximum of 7 games

Usually football players are unable to play more than 2 games in one week.

So in the Olympic Games, you will have no more than 16 teams.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

A kick-ball obsessed country like the UK can't even be bothered to put together an Olympic squad if they aren't the host nation.

This is a more of a legal thing, then a soccer thing. Britain doesn't want a UK Olympic team because FIFA might use that as precedent to argue against the Scotland, England and Wales teams.

 

[Fletch]

It's not that the UK can't be bothered, it's just there is no such thing as a UK football team, with England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland competing separately.

One was put together, with the Scots and Northern Irish boycotting, in 2012 but that was a purely one-off. Team GB happening in the Olympics on a regular basis would risk the independence of the home nations, which several other nations would like to end.

 

[Workable Goblin]

So in the Olympic Games, you will have no more than 16 teams.

So? There are plenty of sports where there are limited numbers of teams allowed to play in the Olympics…among which, women’s football/soccer! That’s a full professional game, too.

Anyway, the problem is probably an interplay of the relatively early and broad popularity of soccer, the Olympics amateurism rules, and FIFA seeing that they could make more money from running their own tournament (once they created it due to the first two points). By contrast, hockey had a more limited pool of interest (Canada, parts of the U.S., the Nordic countries, and Russia/the Soviet Union) and the IIHF insisted on amateurism almost as long as the Olympics did, so there was less incentive to fluff up their tournament.

The easiest way to achieve this is probably for FIFA being run by people like those at the IOC, who think amateurism is great and professionals are bad. Then they have no reason to create a separate tournament for professionals. Of course this will fall eventually, but you could plausibly maintain it until about the time Olympic amateurism was abolished. They might create their own separate tournament, but the Olympics will be well-established by then and will probably remain dominant or at least significant.

 

[Orcbuster]

Problem here is that football is bigger than all the other olympic sports combined. No other single sport comes close in sheer broad international popularity.

 

[Intosh]

So? There are plenty of sports where there are limited numbers of teams allowed to play in the Olympics…among which, women’s football/soccer! That’s a full professional game, too.

A World Football competition with only 16 teams for men is very limited. Think the second part of the World Cup when it is almost a miracle for a team outside Europe and Latin America to qualify.

Also the Olympic Games years (2020-2024) is the years that the Continental Cup are played such as the Euro. The Copa America sometimes also played during the Olympic Games year. You cannot have two majors competition the same year.

And the Olympic Games is in August when most of the national or continental club competitions already began.

Also it is best for the Olympic Games to be a display for women football and junior players (under 21), because Euro, Copa America and World Cup is enough for men international competitions. No need to add something...

 

[Intosh]

Problem here is that football is bigger than all the other olympic sports combined. No other single sport comes close in sheer broad international popularity.

Yes, a major men football competition on the Olympic Games will completely cannibalised fans attention and others sports will suffer from the lack of support.

Many football fans are watching all the games of the major football competition once the round robin part is finished and only single elimination matches are played.

16 teams competition = 8 + 4 + 2 + 2 = 16 matches to watch in two weeks.

No more time to watch anything else.

 

[Fulano]

It will never happen because FIFA DOES NOT want it to happen. They will never let another event not controlled or organized by them to overshadow their own tournaments. It would like, for example, if American Football was in the Olympics, the NFL would not want to share their cake with them, let alone the massive monster (at least in marketing terms) that is the Super Bowl.
Or maybe I should have started with Baseball, an actual Olympic sport which was organized by the WBSC. And while they had their audience, it was always dwarfed by the other monster that is the American MLB.
For this, you would need for FIFA to have never existed, but probably making Football Soccer a lot less popular sport as a side effect.

 

[Citycat]

As the above poster writes, it's pretty much impossible with the OP's 1986 POD.

You need to go back to before 1930 and have the FIFA World Cup never existing.

The Olympics would then continue being the premier international football tournament as it was IOTL from 1900-1928, with the gold medalists being recognised as the world champions.