What will happen to Olympic soccer?

With Argentina’s 1-0 victory against Nigeria on Friday night, the men’s soccer Olympic tournament came to an end after an entertaining couple of weeks.

For some, like the Americans, it was a big deal and a chance to evaluate the country’s young talent on an international stage. For others it was more routine and less worthy of high scrutiny. But in all, it was two weeks full of high-level, open-field soccer that saw plenty of entertaining goals and intriguing matchups.

It seems like players enjoy the tournament, with headlining names such as Messi and Ronaldinho eager to participate. Even though the tournament is a mostly U-23 affair, some of the best players care a lot about that gold medal and representing their country in an event that screams national pride.

Even though it’s not the highest level of soccer, it’s good enough to draw plenty of interest.

But sadly this may be the last quality Olympic tournament we see, thanks to the ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport that European clubs don’t have to allow their players to participate in the event.

Guys like Messi will still have the opportunity to play if they want to spurn the wishes of their clubs, because after all, what are they going to do? Bench their best players?

It’s the good-but-not-great players who will really suffer from the ruling, as they will not want to upset their clubs and risk their jobs. That will greatly decrease the quality of the competition, which in turn will deter the Messis and Ronaldinhos from wanting to play in the first place.

Some people won’t care about this development because they already scoff at the tournament, but they’re aren’t that many international competitions to see Messi & Co. showcase their skills, and it would be a shame to lose one of them because of this ruling.

What do you think? Should/will the ruling be reversed? If it’s not, will we see a huge drop-off in the tournament? Do you think the tournament stinks as it is? Did you enjoy this tournament?

Let the comments pour down.