The IOC wants the men's football competition at the Olympic Games to be "a little closer" to the World Cup

Madrid (EFE).- The Vice President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Juan Antonio Samaranch, stated this Monday that the aspiration of this organization is for the men's football competition of the Games to be "a little closer" to the world championship and expressed confidence that FIFA will accept this demand.

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Samaranch revealed this goal and the contacts maintained with FIFA President Gianni Infantino during his speech at a colloquium entitled 'Geopolitics and Sport' organized by LaLiga at the headquarters of the Center for Higher Studies of National Defense (Ceseden) in Madrid. «From FIFA's side, there are many demands regarding women's football and 7-a-side football, and we want the senior men's competition to be a little closer to the world championship. We all want something, both entities, and I think we are going to take very important steps forward to achieve it. I don't know if it's called geopolitics, but for us it is very important», Samaranch indicated. The vice president of the Lausanne (Switzerland)-based entity did not provide further details on the IOC's plans, nor when they might come into effect. In Los Angeles 2028, the men's tournament will go from having sixteen teams, as in Paris 2024, to twelve teams, while in the women's it has done the opposite - from twelve to sixteen.

Desire to try to move forward in some things

«There is a great desire to try to move forward on some things (…) The program is changing and evolving and from June of this year there will be news on how the current program will be evaluated from now on and how it will evolve», the Spanish executive limited himself to commenting on possible changes in the sports included in the Games. In Paris 2024, sixteen teams competed in the men's football category, with the entire squad composed of players under 23 years of age, except for three without age limit, while in the World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada this summer, 48 countries will participate for the first time.

The calendar is going to get complicated

Samaranch anticipated that the sports calendar, and that of football in particular, "will become very complicated" because there will be some edition of the Summer Games that take place in autumn in the northern hemisphere. "The calendar is going to get complicated and it's going to get very complicated. It cannot be that because of the issue of global warming, because of the geography of the planet, because of temperatures in certain parts of the world, the IOC will cross out and eliminate the possibility of organizing Games in the southern part. That is going to change," Samaranch reflected.

Olympic Games in Autumn?

Will we see Olympic Games of summer in autumn? Without a doubt," added the son of the person who was the head of the IOC between 1980 and 2001.

The president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, was against football gaining weight in the Games because it would further saturate the schedules of national competitions. Tebas opined that increasing the participation of men's national football teams would "compromise" the start in August of the world's major leagues that "generate tens of billions of euros" and "disrupt the entire calendar and structure of the industry" of football. "Some Olympic Games would affect a lot of countries. Hopefully Infantino has sports diplomacy, consults and asks. It worries me. We will have to try to keep it from going into orbit. For me it's fine as it is, let it not be like a World Cup. Hopefully there is a gap, it can be considered, but honestly I don't see it," Tebas defended. The president of the employers' association of professional football clubs remarked that giving more weight to the men's competition in the Games would further saturate the calendar, decrease club revenues and affect the rest of the footballers.