BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 6 : THEY CAN’T FIND A COMMON GOAL

Attendance at the Olympic soccer tournament has been disappointing, adding heat to an already tense situation between the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, soccer’s international governing body.

For the first time, Olympic soccer is open only to players 23 and under. FIFA changed the eligibility rules to eliminate most of the world’s established professional players to preserve the importance of FIFA’s World Cup, which is held every four years.

This development angered IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who, naturally, wants to preserve the importance of the Olympic Games. The next World Cup will be in the United States in 1994, with the third-place game, one semifinal and the final at the Rose Bowl.

Already Samaranch and FIFA President Joao Havelange have clashed in Barcelona. Samaranch wants soccer--one of the world’s most popular sports--to be a centerpiece of the Olympic Games. Havelange said that if the IOC didn’t like the way the sport was run, FIFA would be happy to pull soccer out of the Olympics.

Added to this has been the general apathy of the Spanish public toward the tournament. Through Tuesday night’s games, soccer had drawn a total of 128,000 spectators for 16 games. That would barely fill Nou Camp Stadium, site of the opening match between the United States and Italy.

This is an average of 8,000 a game. By comparison, soccer at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles drew an average of 46,000.

How to explain the weak attendance in a soccer-mad country?

One explanation is that Spaniards are saturated with the highest level of professional soccer, both on television and with the local team, FC Barcelona, which is the European club champion. With most of the games in the Olympic tournament televised anyway, why spend the money and fight the crowds?

Another scenario may be that soccer is beginning to feel the effects of the growing international popularity and marketing of basketball and baseball. In many countries, soccer must now compete for fan interest.

* This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.