With gender parity being exactly 50/50 in these Olympics, the women of the U.S. won 65% of their gold medals, and also won a greater percentage of medals overall than the men did. Now it’s not like the American men did bad or anything, but clearly they are a step behind the women, and there’s a few reasons for this.
The first is Title IX: for those unaware, title IX ensures that men and women in the US have equal opportunity in all regards, including sports and athletics. Especially in collegiate sports, there are regulations that colleges must follow to make sure women are given the same opportunity as men, things such as giving out an equal number of scholarships, making sure practice times are equitable, etc… To my knowledge (correct me if I’m wrong), there are not many other countries where this is a thing. So the U.S. women receive much better training and have more opportunities for success compared to other countries, as more money is probably spent on men’s sports in these other countries and they don’t invest in women’s sports as heavily.
But that’s only part of the equation: because why exactly, if the men in the U.S. get the same training and opportunities as the women in the U.S., shouldn’t they be performing just as well? The simple answer as to why they aren’t is football (American football). Football is the number one most invested sport in the U.S., and is played almost exclusively by men. Colleges pour all their money and scholarships into football, which means in order to comply with Title IX, they have to make cuts to some other men’s programs, such as gymnastics, wrestling, volleyball, etc…
Why do you think U.S. women’s gymnastics has always been superior to men’s gymnastics? Well, because if you’re a male athlete in the U.S. and you want a scholarship, chances are you’re more likely to find one playing football, as opposed to gymnastics. Not to say you can’t find one for gymnastics, but it’s much harder. This isn’t the case for women however, as football is not a sport where they get scholarships.
For women’s sports, the funding is more well-rounded. Basketball may get a bit more, but other than that, I’d like to take a guess that the rest of the sports get roughly equal funding, not to mention there aren’t any sports with a significantly higher number of players. However, for men’s sports, football gets a large portion the money, and basketball also get a decent amount. This leaves other men’s sports that are typically in the Olympics in the dust. Not to mention, a football team has about 50-60 players, which eats up much more scholarships for men, and unfortunately, other sports are sacrificed for it.
This is just the culture of the US and it’s not going to change anytime soon. Football generates the most revenue, and so colleges aren’t going to have any incentive to cut funding for football programs. But they will have to keep making more and more cuts to other men’s sports, unless something systematically changes.
As far as I’m aware, in future Olympics, the US women will either keep doing better or remain about the same amount ahead of their competition, whereas the US men will continue to trend downwards and not be as dominant, because colleges and other athletic programs will invest way more into football (a non-Olympic sport) than they will into sports that are part of the Olympics.
Football (soccer) in the Olympics is not valued by the majority of countries that are very good at it. It’s not even considered a third tier international achievement. Most professional teams don’t release their players to play and it just ends up being youth players a few more aged stars that have negotiated a temporary leave from their clubs.
In short, no one is seriously trying to win Olympic medals in football.
That’s not the point though - irrespective of Olympic relevance soccer is the worldwide counterpart to America football when it comes to cultural dominance and resources. So this argument that the popularity of one dominant sport detracts from other Olympic sports doesn’t hold water.
The point OP is trying to make is that the US’s obsession with American football detracts from investing more into other men’s sports. The point the commenter you replied to is making is that if this were true, countries that are obsessed with association football would be at a similar disadvantage, because their resources would go into football rather than other sports. This has no relationship whatsoever to whether or not football is valued as an Olympic sport. No one is saying you are trying to win gold in Olympic football. It’s a big picture resource allocation discussion.
Your first paragraph tells me you don’t follow Olympic soccer very closely, as Men’s Olympic soccer IS a “youth” U-23 tournament, with 3 overage players.
99% of these u-23 players are pros, as a non-FIFA tournament, clubs they do not have to release them, and it’s often during European preseason. However for the MLS and some other leagues, it’s the full off season so no problems. It’s simply hit or miss depending on that players individual relationship with their club.
The women’s tournament is full team, so no age restrictions so in many ways it’s redundant to the womens world cup in that it’s pretty much the same. Also since women’s pro soccer is not as competitive as men’s, all the players are released.
Both men and women even at soccer powerhouse countries like Spain do “try and win”, its probably a third tier trophy in Europe, but is probably a second tier trophy in Asia, Concacaf, and Conmebol.
Personally if I ran the Olympics I would absolutely replace Mens Football with Futsal since that would actually produce the best Futsal players instead of the current Mens Tournament which features under 23 players who may not ever end up playing a single cap for their national team.
And I don’t know about other countries but if you did this, there would probably be a lot more talented people from Australia because indoor futsal is something lots of people who don’t play soccer play, heck we even have mixed teams, especially in primary school but even in the senior levels (so they have male, female and mixed 18+)
Your first sentence belies a misunderstanding. It is one because of the facts I laid out. It was not always, they simply could not get players to turn up.
Who cares about the MLS? I’m talking about the top countries in the world. There’s one player in the MLS anyone would regard as world class and he’s ready to retire.
Spain do not care about it as evidenced by the muted reaction to their win.
You can’t say any football tournament in which most European nations barely send even two top players is of any great value.
I am English, have lived in France and Sweden, and in none of these places was it seen as anything other than a waste of time.
Like I said, in Europe the Olympic soccer tournament is a third tier cup, but not in the rest of the world.
Who cares about MLS, Liga MX, Brazilian Serie A, or Argentine Primera, J1? People in those countries do.