5IVE: Paris 2024 Olympics, Quarter-Finals Review
5IVE: Paris 2024 Olympics, Quarter-Finals Review
The brutal schedule is taking its toll, plus Group A teams bow out after defeats for hosts France and holders Canada, while USA, Germany, Spain and Brazil march into medal contention...
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What to do about the schedule?
There’s no about it, the gruelling schedule - combined with travel and the heat - is taking its toll on players in France.
It was predictable too, as injuries continue to pile up throughout the domestic season, and top players become more and more vocal about the demands of the calendar on players who did not get the conditioning and training their male equivalents had access to growing up.
“It’s very tough, especially because you only have two days but also you have to travel,” said Spain’s Laia Aleixandri after their win against Colombia.
“We go back to Marseille. We’re trying to do our best to recover the best we can and just look forward and prepare the best we can for the next game.”
The only time a team gets three straight days between games is the semi-final to final, meaning whoever drops into the bronze medal match will have played six games, with two days only between every single one of them.
Take into account teams have to travel the day after a game, it leaves very little time to recover before training again on matchday minus one.
For example, after Spain defeated Colombia after a frankly ridiculous 146 minutes of football, they’re now on the road to the south coast and Marseille, and win or lose either have to hot foot it back to Lyon or go all the way up to Paris to prepare for a final.
That’s after Spain played 16 minutes of stoppage time against Brazil 72 hours earlier, while Brazil had to go through another 16 minutes against France, which felt incredibly excessive to anyone watching the match.
For Germany, it’s the opposite, as they now leave the Riviera to make their way to Lyon, while Brazil have to head to Marseille all the way from Nantes in the north west, the longest journey of all, to play a semi-final in 48 hours.
What can be done? Well, probably not much, given the nature of an Olympic Games, though it does feel it could start earlier still. It starts a day before the official opening ceremony anyway (two days before for the men) and would it really hurt if it started a few more days in advance? Given the games are barely in Paris anyway, it still has the feel of its own tournament rather than being reliant on the overall schedule.
The squad situation is still insanity, if we’re honest. Yes, the alternate rules allows some flexibility, but teams can still only name 18 players, and therefore seven substitutes, and they can only use three. Why not five?!
In the case of a player suspended, you can only name six, leaving the USA on Saturday with a 17-player squad for their fourth game in just over a week.
Surely we can do better?!
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The hosts stumble - again
If there was a ‘shock’ result to be had when talking about the best eight national teams left in the Olympics, it was probably Group A winners - and Olympic Games hosts - France bowing out to Brazil, who finished third in Group C and qualified by a mere goal, thanks to some Australian profligacy against Zambia.
It did have the feeling of France doing a ‘France’, but in front of a home crowd they actually started well and wasted a great chance to go in front when Brazil goalkeeper Lorena was again the hero from the penalty spot, denying Sakina Karchaoui.
For Hervé Renard, that’s probably that, with one of his assistants set to take over, and despite a promising World Cup it never quite worked out for an appointment met with plenty of fanfare.
Once again, it was a quarter-final loss for a France side all too familiar with the feeling.
Meanwhile, I wrote last week there is some excitement about this new generation of Brazilian talent, and judging by the reaction that isn’t necessarily felt back in Brazil itself, but this will have done wonders for their morale with a home World Cup on the horizon.
They were defensively disciplined and clinical when the big chance fell to Gabi Portilho with eight minutes of normal time to go, booking a rematch with world champions Spain.
That’s as tough as it gets, but even the fact they will now get the chance to play for a medal of some sort seems to have defied the expectations Brazil had for themselves heading into the Olympics, and for that alone it’s been a success.
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