You have to be less than 23 years old to enter the Olympics as a Soccer player. The player pool for people under 23 is very different. And most of the stars in Professional football are older than 23. I believe this is done on purpose for three reasons. 1. So that you don't have two world cups. 2. So that professional players don't have yet another game and practice added to their already ridiculous busy schedule. 3. also so you have a venue that countries other than Western Europe, Brazil, and Argentina, actually have a competitive chance on. It's true that Olympic soccer sucks ( I don't want to watch it), but it does provide a different experience. This is also a great chance to see the up and coming stars of soccer.

Also if you watch the youth World Cups, I bet these qualifications would make more sense.

Restricting ourselves to the men's tournament, because you strike me as the kind of person who considers a woman's place in in the kitchen...

Sixteen teams compete. The host nation (that's Great Britain, btw) automatically qualify, so there are fifteen places up for grabs.

Argentina aren't there because Brazil and Uruguay were the two qualifiers from the CONCACAF Preliminary Competition.

Portugal, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, France and Greece aren't there because Spain, Switzerland and Belarus were the three qualifiers from the UEFA Preliminary Competition.

Australia? Heh, Australia. They were in a four team group with UAE, Uzbekistan and Iraq. They finished bottom, having drawn all three home games 0-0, drawing away to Iraq, and losing away to the other two.

AUSTRALIA: P6, W0, D4, L2, GF 0, GA 3.

Six matches. No goals. What a loss to the tournament.

Anyway, do you see the pattern here? The teams that are at the Olympics are there because they qualified. The teams that are not are the Olympics are not there because they failed to qualify.

It's really not that complicated.

At mojolicious: It's actually very complicated for an average Australian like this fool...

its called football

plus david beckam is too old to play now yes i know your upset

Look at the line of up of countries and even then the players they will bring it sucks. if the olympics cant draw full line up of every country then why even bother with olympics.

So what makes the olympics so sucky that it cant even draw top world teams and their players?

There is no

Argentina but theres switzerland -_-

portugal but theres belarus -_-

italy but theres peru -_-

germany but theres honduras -_-

netherlands but theres gabon -_- who the f*^k?

australia but theres sengal -_-

ivory coast but theres morocco??

france but theres united arab emirates wtf?

greece meh greece shouldnt be there anyway

Oh and we got badmington who cares?

PS the olympics suck!