Olympic gold in soccer

We are just a short time away from the Olympic event, which this year will take place in Paris, the capital of France. As most people know, it is customary to mention the city where they will take place and not the country, I don't know why, although it doesn't seem as important to me as the games themselves.

Among the enormous number of sports and specialties, football could not be missing, although here, being an event that privileges amateurism over professionalism, something that at this point in the circumstances seems somewhat ridiculous and out of place, it is reserved for players up to 23 years of age, although each team may include up to 3 players who exceed that requirement. This gives greater appeal at least in terms of speculation about the presence of great figures of this sport worldwide, there is talk of Messi, Mbappé and Di María, for example, something that is far from confirmed but that serves to create greater attention to games in general and football in particular.

Today the draw will be held for the teams that will make up each group, although it seems premature since the Asian Cup for under 23s still needs to be played, a tournament that will take place in Qatar between 4/15 and 5/3 and where 3 direct entries will be defined plus a team that must compete in a playoff with a team from Africa. Consequently, in the draw, there will be some unknowns regarding the members of each group. For now, it is known that the local France and Argentina will integrate pot one as seeds, plus the first and second Asian teams resulting from the aforementioned tournament. At the draw ceremony, Javier Saviola was announced gold in Athens 2004 in the team led by Marcelo Bielsa and Didier Drogba, captain and top scorer of his Ivory Coast team, now retired.

Reviewing a little history, I must conclude that the top winner of the gold medal is surprising: Hungary with 3 medals, then things begin to have a certain degree of normality: Argentina, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and Uruguay have 2 and East Germany, Belgium, Cameroon, Czechoslovakia, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Sweden and Yugoslavia 1 gold each of these countries, which as some will see no longer exist.

There were also 3 tournaments in the first games that FIFA does not recognize, the first of them in 1896 with the first Olympics held in Athens, the winner was Denmark, but it was only an exhibition tournament, in 1900 in Paris, as well as in 1904 in New York, teams from each country, not national teams, competed in the tournament, in the first the team from Upton Park (United Kingdom) took first place and in the second Galt from Canada. The IOC recognizes these results.

Let's focus on the officials recognized by FIFA, the case of Hungary is curious, supposedly young people are the future, which nourishes their senior teams, but they have not managed to replicate the success of the youth teams in these.

Latin America has been going strong and the last 5 Olympic Games held have demonstrated its supremacy, with two victories for Argentina and Brazil and one for Mexico.

Since 1996, women's soccer has been played in Atlanta and here the United States has demonstrated superiority, winning four of the seven tournaments played, although it has failed in the last two. As I said, the gold medal has the following distribution: USA 4, Norway, Germany and Canada one each.

Although this is not replicated in women's soccer, for the first time in almost 130 years of the Olympic Games, there will be 50% participation of women and 50% of men, far from the 98% of men and 2% of women at the beginning.

Politics will also have, as always, a good participation in the games, the IOC will exclude Russians and Belarusians from the opening ceremony. I don't know what other interference outside of sport we will have, but surely there will be.

The game of football is open, we will see what happens this year and if we will have figures of global relevance to give it greater significance and interest.