Pic Courtesy (Guardian) : Neymar celebrates with Gabriel Barbosa after the forward known as Gabigol opened the scoring for Brazil
The Selecao made it! Not vintage stuff by Brasil, but after struggling against South Africa and Iraq in scoreless draws the boys from Brasil beat Denmark 4-0 to go to the next round, I am not sure if this team will win gold (men's football).
Every country has a dark period in their history and this goes for sport too, Brasil is not the same especially after the 7-1 thrashing by Germany in the 2014 World Cup and as Thomas Friedman's epic bestseller "The world is flat" stated(A study on economic and business trends) that everyone is catching up and competition is on even keel, this goes for football too.
However the Olympic football tournament is not recognized by FIFA and as such clubs are not obliged to release players for international duty and the quality of this tournament is suffering due to this.
The rules are that the team is allowed to field 8 under-23 players on the field and 3 over age players, a strange rule and I understand FIFA does not want to overshadow the World Cup by giving the soccer show a Carte Blanche, but because of this, a genetic mutation of a football sense is occurring.
Teams like Nigeria, Iraq, South Korea and other second tier soccer nations who have most of their best players in domestic competition field stronger teams and are unified with the national agenda and for reasons unknown in the case of Spurs player Son Heung-Min was released by manager Mauricio Pochettino.
In Son's case or those who have been released by foreign clubs to play for their country in the Olympics, it could be that this tournament can give the player a competitive edge when they come back to their clubs and the Olympics is in August so the calendar suits the top European leagues just fine, with the exception of Neymar who was given a choice to either play in the Copa America two months ago or the Olympics, he duly choose the Olympics.
Most of these players from Africa, Asia and even some North, Central and Caribbean are able to field a first 11 that is above average compared to the well established football nations, just ask Argentina in this Olympics.
The best players are also tired from a heavy calendar including the Champions League or Europa League and the heavy European league schedule and and this is why you can see many dull and dreary matches and a sudden thrilling score in other group matches e.g South Korea 3-3 Germany or Nigeria 5-4 Japan.
Perhaps a full-blown amateur status can bring back the true Olympic spirit and romanticism of the Olympic games. Expect the gold to go to an underdog, this might explain why Nigeria, Cameroon and Mexico have won Gold in the past.
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