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.

The establishment of the World Cup led to the Olympic tournament falling in importance and prestige, and this wasn’t helped by FIFA deciding to keep the tournament exclusive to amateurs among other restrictions.

Nowadays, participating in the tournament is restricted to players under 23 years of age, and it perfectly complements FIFA’s other youth tournaments are under 17 and 20 level. Nevertheless, FIFA also allows teams to field 3 overage players and which is almost always taken up. Such a rule is considered nonessential and actually against the purpose of the tournament by many, including myself.

There are many people who are already thinking of posting a quick response to this article, but before putting hand to keyboard (as opposed to pen to paper), let me give a detailed analysis as what the tournament truly represents in the world of football

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.

However, increased coverage and pleasing national football coaches has taken precedence at FIFA when planning youth tournaments. It may be ridiculous to consider the Olympic tournament a youth tournament but when put aside the World Cup, it certainly does possess such characteristics.

The fundamental feature of any youth tournament is the idea that it is a once in a lifetime opportunity, meaning that if you don’t grab it the first time, you’ll never again have the chance to try again. Both the Under 17 and 20 world championships are just like that and all players know they’ve got one chances to participate in such a tournament. On the other hand, when it comes to the Olympics, players will take the attitude that they will always have the opportunity to play in the tournament regardless of age. This attitude is not one to be encouraged in football. The Olympic tournament is and cannot be treated with such disdain and therefore the overage rule must be condemned to history.

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