{"id":25977,"date":"2020-02-11T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T13:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsoccer.com\/?p=25977"},"modified":"2020-02-17T09:55:08","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T14:55:08","slug":"olympic-soccer-three-things-know-2020-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2020\/02\/11\/olympic-soccer-three-things-know-2020-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic Soccer: Three things to know ahead of 2020 Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soccer fans around the world will likely be delighted this summer considering how many great matches they are in for. On June 21st, all the best soccer teams from Europe will gather in\u2026 pretty much all over Europe – unlike in other years when the European Championship<\/a> is hosted by a single country, this year, it will be scattered across 12 cities to celebrate the event\u2019s 60th birthday. And soon after the crowning of the king of European football, the strikers, wingers, referees, and all non-athletes vital to sports<\/a> will head over to Tokyo to measure their worth again during the 2020 Summer Olympics.<\/p>\n

Not all soccer players can participate in the Olympics, though. One of the biggest absent will be the biggest soccer nation in the world.<\/p>\n

No Great British men\u2019s team at the Olympics<\/h3>\n

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, better known as the UK, is not sending any of its star athletes to Tokyo this summer. The reason for England missing the tournament seems bureaucratic.<\/p>\n

First of all, there is no official \u201cnational team\u201d in British men\u2019s soccer because the country doesn\u2019t have a national soccer league – the teams compete in the English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh Premier Leagues. There were times when the UK was represented by a unified soccer team at the Summer Olympics – sporadically, that is.<\/p>\n

Since the UEFA Under-21 Championship serves as a qualifier for the Summer Olympics, a country with no official National Team like England has no way of participating in the event.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that the UK won\u2019t send a soccer team to Tokyo – they will be represented by Great Britain\u2019s women’s Olympic football team.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an upper age limit<\/h3>\n

Not every soccer player gets to play at the Olympics – many of them are simply too old to do so. As per the IOC\u2019s rules, the players\u2019 age is cut off at 23 – all but three players in every squad have to be younger than that.<\/p>\n

In \u201cnormal\u201d soccer, there are separate competitions for youngsters and seasoned veterans. This year, the \u201cseasoned veterans\u201d will all be playing at the EURO, leaving Olympic soccer devoid of star power and attention from the fans.<\/p>\n

True fans don\u2019t want it<\/h3>\n

There is some anecdotal evidence saying that, while soccer was not an official Olympic sport in 1896, the first time the modern-day Olympic Games took place, an unofficial soccer tournament was held at Athens. Then, in the early 1900s, soccer became an official Olympic discipline.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1930<\/a>, the first FIFA World Cup was held in Uruguay, becoming the most relevant tournament in the world of soccer. Since then, the two events – the World Cup and the Olympic soccer tournament – are held in parallel, with the former growing in relevance, while the latter\u2026 not.<\/p>\n

There are many voices that consider that soccer shouldn\u2019t be an Olympic sport. For most other sports, winning an Olympic gold medal is the pinnacle – for soccer, it\u2019s pretty much irrelevant in the light of the many other competitions to be won. The two simply don\u2019t need each other: the Olympics can do well without soccer, and soccer doesn\u2019t need another major international competition with outdated limitations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soccer fans around the world will likely be delighted this summer considering how many great matches they are in for. On June 21st, all the best soccer teams from Europe will gather in\u2026 pretty much all over Europe – unlike in other years when the European Championship is hosted by a single country, this year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1788,"featured_media":25978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-fifa-tournament"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}