Kylian Mbappe had high hopes of playing in the Paris Olympics, as did Lionel Messi, it was reported. But neither player will play because, like most male soccer stars, they are victims of an age-old power struggle controlled by soccer's international governing body, FIFA.
The dispute is why tournament organizers are imposing two significant restrictions on the men's Olympic roster.
1. All but three players must be 23 years of age or younger.
2. Professional clubs are not required to grant players permission to play in tournaments, regardless of the player's age.
The second rule ruined Mbappé's dream. Not even French President Emmanuel Macron could save it. “I've always said that the Paris tournament is special and I wanted to play,” the Paris-born Mbappé said in March. But Real Madrid refused to let him go. And, well, “they're our employers,” explained the French teammate Aurélien Chouameni. “If Real Madrid vetoes it, there's not much to say.”
Only two of the world's top 100 players – Argentina's Julián Alvarez and Morocco's Achraf Hakimi – will be in attendance as dozens of other clubs have refused the necessary permits.
Most of the 288 players on the list are up-and-coming talent or mid-career veterans. Even under-23 stars like Gio Reyna, who were regulars on the U.S. men's national team at the 2024 Copa America, are not expected to be on the U.S. squad announced on Monday. The only three players over the age of 23 on the list are MLS defenders Walker Zimmerman and Miles Robinson and midfielder Djordje Mihajlovic.
The rule relegates men's Olympic soccer to a junior team competition, and was put in place because FIFA didn't want the Olympics, or any other soccer tournament, to rival the World Cup, though the historical explanation is a bit more nuanced.
FIFA has a somewhat friendly relationship with the IOC
Once upon a time, a century ago, before there was a competing World Cup, the Olympics was soccer's pinnacle. FIFA recognised the Olympics as a world championship in the 1920s, but amateurism complicated things.
At the time, soccer was slowly going professional. The International Olympic Committee was wedded to the ideal that all participants should be amateurs. So FIFA took the initiative and created an open World Cup that quickly eclipsed the Olympic Games.
Thus began a series of battles between FIFA and the IOC that would shape Olympic football. Amid initial disputes over eligibility, football was dropped from the Olympic programme in 1932. It was reinstated in 1936 and continued after World War II, but remained entirely amateur, so much so that football was cemented as a second-rate sport.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the IOC finally lifted the rules surrounding amateurism, but by then things had changed: FIFA had grown into a commercially-driven organisation, and recognised that a fully professionalised Olympic football tournament was a potential threat to the dominance and profitability of the men's World Cup.
So they negotiated a series of compromises: the first of which was that in the '80s, countries outside Europe and South America could send all their professional players to compete, but any European or South American players who played in the World Cup were ineligible.
In 1992, this unfair limit was narrowed to players under the age of 23, and in 1996, three over-age players were added. The limit has remained in place ever since.
But FIFA's control doesn't stop there. A key FIFA mechanism is the so-called “international calendar,” which defines specific periods during which professional clubs (the equivalent of soccer's Lakers or Yankees) can sign players to their national teams (Team USA).
The transfer market is structured around major competitions, for example ensuring that all players are available for continental championships such as the Euros and the Copa America.
But the Olympics are not on the FIFA calendar, making Olympic qualification a sometimes contentious topic among national team coaches, agents, players and clubs.
The mystery of the Olympic roster
Those negotiations are what U.S. men's national team coach Gregg Berhalter called the “first hurdle.” For months, Berhalter, U.S. Soccer officials and U.S. Under-23 coach Marko Mitrovic, who heads the Olympic team, have been in repeated talks with clubs to secure players for the Paris tournament.
And some clubs rejected it. Backed by FIFA rules, clubs had all the leverage. European clubs start pre-season in July and the season starts in August, so their own self-interest is blocking key players from going to the Olympics. Among the US hopefuls who were reportedly rejected were Ricardo Pepi and Malik Tillman (PSV Eindhoven), Brandon Vázquez (Monterrey) and Haji Wright (Coventry City).
But those negotiations were only part of the puzzle that Mitrovic, Berhalter and their colleagues around the world had to solve. As Berhalter puts it, “The second hurdle was Copa America participation.” The Copa and Euros were the top competitions for the six Olympians from Europe and the Americas. They boasted greater prestige and prize money, and they took place just a few weeks before the 2024 Olympics.
The United States, Argentina, France and Spain all sent A-teams to these tournaments, and they knew their A-team players would need rest at some point: Between the long European club season (August-May), the Copa America (June-July) and the Olympics (July-August), players who played in both international tournaments would not get enough rest.
Meanwhile, a post-Olympic break, even if it is just a two-week mini-offseason, would mean a delay at the start of the 2024-25 club season.
That means the U.S. Copa America and Olympic squads will be almost completely different, with only Robinson, who never played a minute in the Copa and whose MLS club season runs from February to December, appearing in both.
And while only a handful of foreign players, like Manchester City's Alvarez, have accepted their club's setbacks and will play for both teams, dozens of others will be on holiday when the Olympics start and then join their clubs on a pre-season tour while the Olympic finals are decided.
Olympic equality gives hope to the US
The upside to a lot of complexity is that it could be an equalizing force and give the U.S. some medal hope.
Of course, the U.S. men's national team has never made it past the quarterfinals in the modern World Cup and is behind France, Spain and Argentina, but the U.S. junior team will be able to compete with other junior teams from around the world and will hopefully advance from a group that also includes France, New Zealand and Guinea.
The Olympic Games generally do not have as many participating countries as the World Cup. Continental confederations are not allowed to have more than three spots. Two of the three European teams that qualified for the UEFA U-21 Championship were Israel and Ukraine. Others include Iraq, Uzbekistan, Mali, Egypt and the Dominican Republic.
For these reasons, men's Olympic soccer can be a game of chance: The women's competition is simply a smaller World Cup in which all the stars can compete, while modern men's winners include Mexico, Cameroon and Nigeria, and medallists include South Korea, Paraguay and Chile.
The usual powerhouses of France, Argentina and Spain will likely still dominate in 2024, but the United States, returning to the Games for the first time since 2008, could compete for a medal. The tournament kicks off with a primetime showdown against hosts France in Marseille on Wednesday, July 24 (3 p.m. ET, USA/Peacock/Telemundo), two days before the Opening Ceremony.
