FIFA group proposes to keep same birth-year cutoff for 2021 Olympic men's soccer eligibility

• by Paul Kennedy  @pkedit, Apr 3, 2020

FIFA has formed a coronavirus working group to address the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the first recommendations is to keep the same age eligibility rules for players in the Olympic men's soccer competition.

The Tokyo Games were moved from 2020 to 2021, but the same eligibility rules will be in place: players born on or after Jan. 1, 1997, and three additional wild-card players.

The USA has yet to finish qualifying. The Concacaf under-23 tournament was canceled after the U.S. roster was picked and most of the players entered training camp in Guadalajara, Mexico, site of the qualifiers.

Nine players on the roster were born in 1997: Hassani Dotson, Jeremy Ebobisse, Justen Glad, Aaron Herrera, Jonathan Lewis, JT Marcinkowski, Erik Palmer-Brown, Sebastian Saucedo and Jackson Yueill (photo).