IOC announces Olympic Games date but no word yet on Olympic qualifiers

The International Olympic Comitee (IOC) announced the new date of the Olympic Games. The games will be held in Tokyo from July 23rd to August 8th of 2021. The postponement means that Concacaf will have plenty of time to move their men’s football Olympic qualifiers, although there has been no word yet on when the competition will happen or even in which year. Concacaf is the only confederation that still doesn’t have their participants for the Olympics.

The U23 Concacaf Championship was going to be held from March 20th to April 1st in Guadalajara. Because of the COVID-19 emergency, the tournament had to be suspended. COVID-19 has caused worldwide struggles and the IOC had to postpone the 2020 Olympic games after worldwide protest, including federations like Canada and Australia saying they would not send a team to the games if the tournament was held in 2020. The new date means that there will be lot of time for the many Olympic qualifiers that hadn’t been completed, although in football it was only Concacaf who hadn’t had their tournament.

Concacaf hasn’t said when will the postponed U23 tournament take place, or even if it will still be held in Guadalajara. There is still no word yet from FIFA if the tournament will remain U23, or if the postponement means that it will be a U24 tournament, as many players who were 23 years old for these games would not be eligible for 2021 if the tournament stays the same. Preliminary reports are that there will be no changes, and the cutoff date would still be January 1, 1997, meaning that the tournament will be U24 instead of U23 for these games only. If Mexico should qualify to the Olympic games, the tournament means that there might be problems because of the 2021 Gold Cup. Players like Sebastian Cordova, Carlos Rodriguez and Roberto Alvarado might miss if they are required for the Olympic games.