A Tale of Two Tournaments

The World Cup and the Olympic Games are undeniably the biggest sporting events on the planet. Both draw millions of spectators to the host country/city, both are big money spinners for their respective organisations, and both generate massive amounts of media coverage.

However, in recent years the two competitions have followed divergent paths. Whereas even twenty years ago, the Olympics would have been the bigger event, since then the World Cup has surpassed it. This is in no small part due to the relentlessly commercial path pursued by Sepp Blatter and his predecessor at FIFA, Joao Havelange, as well as extreme canniness when it came to selecting hosts (USA in 1994, Japan/South Korea in 2002, South Africa 2010, Russia 2018, with the obvious exception of Qatar 2022, which can only be attributed to an attack of madness brought on by large amounts of money). This gave football a major march on its rivals, particularly in Asia, where much of the growth of the future is likely to come. In addition, the Olympics can't just plug one sport, as it oversees a whole range of events.

A second factor lies in the growth of sporting events as a whole. When the Olympics was founded in 1896, sport was a tiny business. There was a clear logic to having all sports in one conglomeration, so as to get whatever publicity was available. Since then, however, almost all sports now have their own tournaments, and the bigger sports tend to have massive ones (Witness the Ryder Cup, Rugby World Cup, etc) As a result, the Olympics tends to be thought about more as an athletic event, and while sports like football are still played, the winning teams are largely ignored. 

Perhaps more importantly is the ethos of the sport. Baron de Coubertain's dream for the Olympics was dialogue between peoples through the mechanism of sport, whereas the World Cup was an afterthought of FIFA, when it realised that there might be money to be made from international football. Furthermore, unlike football, which for most of its history was restricted to Europe and Latin America, the Olympics contained something for everyone. As a result, nationalism demanded a good haul of medals. Berlin in 1936 was the classic example of a country using the Olympics for national prestige, but the heyday of the Games was the Cold War, where the USA and USSR each sought to one-up the other in the medal stakes. A similar rivalry existed between East and West Germany, to the extent that the East had state-sponsored doping programmes to bulk up its medal count. The Olympics became an extension of the superpower rivalry, and political interference was rife, most notably in 1980 and 1984 when the West and East boycotted each other's respective Games.

As a result, the Olympics has always been a more nakedly political event than the World Cup (with the odd politically charged exception like England v Argentina in 1986 against the backdrop of the Falklands). While the choice of host for the World Cup was generally based on existing infrastructure, with a few new projects and some upgrade work the Olympic Committee expected a new-build stadium and village, with the entire specialist infrastructure erected for the event. Given these looser strictures (one stadium versus ten), the potential host list for the Olympic Games was, until recently, much larger than that for the World Cup. So it became a situation where politics played a huge part. Compared to the controversy that surrounded the decision to award Beijing the 2008 Games in spite of its appalling human-rights record, any controversy about Russia receiving the 2018 World Cup focused less on human rights and more on alleged corruption in the decision making process. The Olympics has always been used by a country as a sort of Expo, in ways the World Cup hasn't. Witness Seoul in 1988, Beijing 2008, and now Rio De Janeiro in 2016. In each case, the Olympics is a showcase for a country's prosperity.

One could make the case that the World Cup eclipsed the Olympics with the end of the Cold War, as the politically charged nature dissipated. Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 were largely forgettable affairs. Beijing 2008, set against a backdrop of a rising China, gained much more media prominence, so perhaps politics is no bad thing for the Games. On the other hand, 1994 marked the first of the modern World Cups, where all stadia had to be 35,000 upwards and top of the range. Concurrent with this was the increase in the number of teams to 32, which opened the door for additional African and Asian countries to challenge the Latin America/Europe duopoly. With the increase in media interest came a major increase in the facilities necessary. One could never imagine the likes of Uruguay (hosts in 1930), Switzerland (1954), or Mexico (1970 and 1986) being selected to host the World Cup again. In reality, there are only a dozen or so countries that could provide the necessary stadia for a World Cup, whereas there are probably fifty or more cities that would be able to do a good Olympics. As a result, the Olympic Committee can afford to be choosy, which is one of the reasons why serial bidder Baku has never been considered (the other being that nobody in their right mind would award a major sporting event to a small autocratic country with nothing to offer other than oil money and delusions of grandeur...).

On the sporting front, the Olympics comes into its own with athletics, which, while not in and of themselves an overly telegenic set of sports, become so due to the sheer amount of events going on. However, even the most committed fan gets to watch only a small part of the Games. Whereas the World Cup boasts thirty-two teams, each comprised of twenty-five players, plus managers, and thus is relatively easy for the casual fan to follow, the Olympics have dozens of sports, each with dozens or even hundreds of entrants. For the casual fan, things like the heptathlon get side-lined in favour of the men's hundred metres. Most of the players in the World Cup, particularly for the European teams, will be on gigantic salaries, whereas only a small amount of the Olympians are even professional athletes.

And yet, despite its commercial success, the World Cup could learn a lot from the Olympics. If the Games were originally a way to bring people together through sport, a political aim, the politics of the World Cup have ended up being a divisive force. While every country's Olympic Committee has a vote in the IOC, power in FIFA is wielded by a tight cabal. Whereas the IOC really had to plug the (mistaken) idea that giving the 2008 games to Beijing would lead to an improvement in China's human-rights situation, FIFA saw fit to give its prize to two non-democracies without blinking.

The Olympics, by virtue of the fact that it has a massive spectrum of events, can also offer something for everyone. While World Cup participants are directly representative of a country, most Olympic events are competed for by individuals. However, there are so many events and medals that most of the world's countries get represented on the medal count. Most teams don't have any representation at the World Cup, and half of those who do are ejected after the first round. As a result, the vast majority of viewers of the World Cup, even more so the later stages, are merely observers with no emotional stake in the game. The sheer volume of events at the Olympics also allows for more politically charged ties, as demonstrated by the notorious Men's Basketball final between the USSR and the USA in 1972, or the public embrace between the Georgian and Russian Women's Shooting representatives in Beijing 2008.

The IOC has had its own corruption scandals, and has had to undergo the kind of reforms many believe FIFA needs. Following the debacle of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics scandal, the committee was made more transparent, thereby hindering the ability of outside actors to suborn it.

One could make the argument that the sheer volume of money floating around the World Cup has had a negative effect on FIFA. The tournament is now seen as much as a marketing tool for the industry of football as a showcase of the game. In raw numbers, the tournament is still heavily biased towards European and Latin American teams, but in qualitative terms the opposite is true. The fact is, though, with the sheer volume of money to be made from Africa and Asia, it makes financial sense to allow more entrants from these regions than ability would allow. Remember, South Africa are the only host in the history of the game to exit in the first round, and out of six African teams to qualify, only one made it to the second stage, alongside one Asian team out of four. The Olympics, which largely bases qualification on the quality of the individual rather than nationality (in the knowledge that everyone will get a few entrants), at least provides a more meritocratic forum.

Where then does the future lie for the two competitions? With the increasing assertiveness of rising powers like China and India, the best hope for the Olympics is that it returns to its Cold War role as a sporting front between rival nations. Meanwhile, the next three World Cups are colossal gambles for the game. Brazil's infrastructure, particularly its airports and hotels, are nowhere near able to cope with the projected influx, and in a country that size, good infrastructure will be vital. Russia has the same problem, which is why all the games will be played west of the Urals, and is coupled with the notorious xenophobia of Russians, as well as a thuggish regime in power. Qatar is a tiny Islamic state that bans alcohol and was once described by Lonely Planet as "the most boring place on earth". Each of these tournaments could go badly wrong and derail FIFA's gravy train. And yet, should they go well, football will have cemented its place as the world's sport.

As the World Cup and the Olympics continue to follow separate paths, comparisons between them will become increasingly meaningless. Yet, for better or for worse, these two events will continue to be the highlights of the world's sporting calendar. That much is certain. The two events, different in ethos, events, and style, are inseparable as the pillars of the sporting calendar.

On 19th October 2002, Wayne Rooney (D.O.B 24/10/85) scored the winning goal for Everton against Arsenal. It was at this point that Greg Bowler (D.O.B 13/10/85) realised that he might not ever make it as a professional footballer.