The Messi Mess: Why South Americans Care So Much About Olympic Soccer

Barcelona FC is doing everything in its power to keep Lionel Messi out of Beijing.

Despite repeated reminders from FIFA that clubs must release players under the age of 23 for the Olympics, Barcelona is refusing to let Messi, 21, play for Argentina, claiming that Olympic soccer not a FIFA-sanctioned event and that FIFA has no right to demand any player's release. The Spanish superclub plans to take its case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport this week while taking Messi with them on their American tour.

Barca isn't the only one holding players back. Two German Bundesliga clubs, Werden Bremen and Schalke 04, are defying a FIFA order to release under-23 Brazilian stars Diego and Rafinha for the Olympics. They plan to go to the CAS as well.

By contrast, Liverpool was under no obligation to release Javier Mascherano, 24, for the Olympics, but they did anyway, and Messi has made it clear that he wants to join Mascherano in Beijing and win the gold for Argentina.

This begs the question: why do these Brazilians and Argentinians care so much about Olympic soccer, which certainly doesn't have the prestige of a World Cup or even a Copa America? They care because, as the BBC's Tim Vickery points out, it was the Olympics that put South American soccer on the map -- and begat the FIFA World Cup.

After its first attempt at an international soccer tournament ended in failure, FIFA agreed in 1914 to oversee the Olympic soccer tournament. Ten years later, Uruguay arrived at the Olympics in Paris as complete unknowns and won a decisive gold medal. Bernard Joy, a famous English footballer and journalist, wrote of the Uruguayans:

[They] played first-rate football, combining speed, skill and perfect ball-control. By marrying short passing to intelligent positional play, they made the ball do all the work, and so kept their opponents on the run.

This was a revelation to the Europeans, who had never seen this style of play before. Expectations were high when the Uruguayans arrived at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. Argentina, however, stole the show, scoring a whopping 23 goals in three matches on their way to the final. Uruguay, however, didn't disappoint. They toppled Holland, Germany and Italy before defeating Argentina in the final to win the gold. Dutch Olympic organizers received more than 250,000 ticket requests for that final. Everyone wanted to see how South America played the game.

Uruguay would not get the opportunity to defend its title in Los Angeles in 1932. Organizers dropped the sport out of the belief that Americans had their own brand of football and wouldn't be interested in this football. As a result, FIFA president Jules Rimet announced plans to stage its first international football competition in 1930 in Uruguay and every four years thereafter in a different location. Uruguay defeated Argentina, 4-2, in the final of the very first World Cup.

South America built its footballing reputation on the Olympics, so that gold medal will always mean more to South American players than Europeans. That's why players like Diego and Rafinha have defied their clubs wishes and gone to Brazil to train with their national teams. Perhaps those clubs would be better off letting them go. As Erik Kirschbaum of Reuters Soccer Blog points out:

How can anyone expect a brilliant player like Diego to get excited about playing in Bremen ever again if he is forced to miss the Olympics in order to take part in a pre-season Bundesliga training camp on the North Sea island of Norderney?

Could we expect Rafinha to have his heart in the Bundesliga's first two matches when his compatriots were trying to win a first gold medal in China?

The CAS is expected to hear the clubs' complaints later this week.