Why don’t the men’s and women’s football tournaments have the same selection criteria?

The two French coaches at the Games, Thierry Henry and Hervé Renard, did not experience the same difficulties when putting together their Olympic list of 18 names.

Two tournaments, two measures. When it came to imagining their group of 18 players for the men’s and women’s Olympic football competitions, which will open before the opening ceremony, on Wednesday 24 and Thursday 25 July respectively, the French selectors were not confronted with the same problems.

If Hervé Renard can, without age limit, line up his international players, like Wendie Renard, Marie-Antoinette Katoto or Grace Geyoro, the task will have been much more complex for Thierry Henry, the coach of the men’s U21s. “Each team must be composed entirely of players born on or after January 1, 2001.”specifies the Paris 2024 organization in its regulations, with three exceptions (in this case Alexandre Lacazette, Jean-Philippe Mateta and Loïc Badé).

But since the Games do not count as a FIFA competition, clubs are not obliged to make their players available for the national teams. And from Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid) to Khephren Thuram (Juventus), refusals have multiplied. “It’s a bit of a topsy-turvy world. The last time I had so many rejections was in middle school.”lamented the 1998 world champion when announcing his pre-list on June 3. But how can we explain this difference between the sexes?

Part of the answer goes back a hundred years, even though women’s football only made its debut at the Olympic Games in 1996, in Atlanta (United States). Imagined by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Games took amateurism as a cardinal value from the beginning of the 20th century. A way of creating a closed circle for the bourgeoisie at the time, who rejected the idea of ​​being paid to practice a physical activity. Present on the program since 1900, football quickly found itself in the sights of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). “At the 1924 Paris Games, it was the discipline that attracted the most public and was the most profitable, with around 30% of the revenue.”contextualizes Paul Dietschy, football historian.

“The problem is that the players present are what are called ‘brown amateurs’, quasi-professionals. This greatly displeased the IOC leaders who then toughened up the notion of amateurism. As a result, FIFA considered creating its own competition: the World Cup.”

Paul Dietschy, football historian

to franceinfo: sport

Organised in 1930 under the leadership of the French Jules Rimet and Henri Delaunay, the first World Cup was open to all players, without restriction. After a temporary exit from the programme for the 1932 Games, football returned to Berlin four years later with a distinction: amateurs at the Olympic Games, professionals at the World Cup, managed by FIFA. A rule that prevailed until 1984, despite a loophole that the Soviet bloc countries took advantage of to monopolize all the Olympic titles from the 1950s onwards. Not officially professional despite similar conditions in practice, the players called up by these nations benefited from the status of state athlete with “complacent jobs in the army, in public companies”explains Paul Dietschy.

“They were guys much older than us, they arrived with almost their national A team full”, remembers Olivier Rouyer, present at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, notably with the young Michel Platini.In the French team, most of us came from training centers with trainee contracts. The other players came from the amateur world and had jobs on the side, especially in the police.” That year, the Blues were beaten 4-0 in the quarter-finals by East Germany, the future Olympic champion.

Despite the “difficult relationships” Between the two bodies, a compromise with FIFA was found by the IOC to modify the formula in 1984. “The FIFA leaders were in a strong position: it was important for them to be at the Games like every major sport, but the priority remained not to devalue their premier competition”recalls Paul Dietschy, director of the magazine Football(s). Hence the decision to include professionals in the Olympic tournament for the first time, while limiting the participation of European and South American players who had played in the World Cup.

“It was time to readjust the balances and then it had good consequences for France since they won in Los Angeles”judges Olivier Rouyer. But after a new victory of the USSR at the following edition, the IOC modified its tournament again before Barcelona 1992 to arrive at the current format. From then on, only players aged under 23 were eligible, with the addition at the following Games of the possibility of using three older jokers. “An idea inspired by the Euro espoir model of the 1970s”, says Paul Dietschy.

This change is firstly aimed at removing the main stars, and thus allowing FIFA to protect its World Cup in which they are already participating. All the while preventing football, which is already more publicised, from definitively taking all the spotlight from other sports. Finally, the aim is not to unbalance the competition too much by offering the possibility to teams less used to shining on the international scene to show themselves. A universalist challenge that pays off, because Nigeria and Cameroon won the gold medal in 1996 and 2000, then imitated by Mexico in 2012.

And what about the women’s tournament? Included in the Olympic Games at an IOC congress in 1993, the classic national teams were invited to the following edition in Atlanta, in 1996. At that time, the Women’s World Cup had only been held twice. “The Women’s World Cup did not have the same media prestige as the men’s, which is a real goldmine in terms of TV rights. The arrival of women’s football at the Olympic Games was therefore seen by FIFA as a way of supporting the development of the discipline, rather than as a threat to its competition.”assures Paul Dietschy, adding that “Fifa has used this to also increase its presence” on the IOC grounds.

While the audiences for the 2023 World Cup were still far from its men’s counterpart in 2022, the quarter-final of Les Bleues against Australia, for example, achieved 70% of the audience share in France at midday. A sign of growing public interest, when that of Kylian Mbappé’s teammates against England in Qatar was 63% in the evening. Is this enough to consider an evolution of the Olympic criteria for women to match those of men, while professionalization is accelerating in the main women’s championships? This is not yet on the agenda. But at the same time, voices are being raised among the players, like the English full-back Lucy Bronze, to denounce a multiplicity of matches that is detrimental to their health.

“Our clubs sometimes forget that we continue to train when we play for our country. I would like you to see what we do in our ‘free time’, it’s non-stop. Then you will understand why we need extra recovery time and why we are asking for programme changes that will benefit everyone.”she called out at the beginning of May via the Fifpro players’ union. To the point of even seeing something positive in the British team’s non-qualification for Paris 2024, which would have been its third international competition in three years. Proof that the question deserves to be asked.