> Olympics [...] literally is the highest competition for sport in the world.
Says who? This is strictly down to prestige.
Btw, association football is played at the Summer Olympics. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's the highest competition for football. By prestige, that's the FIFA World Cup. By skill, it's perhaps the UEFA Champions League. [0]
[0] I don't know enough about football to say for sure that the Champions League has the highest skill on display. But even the Champions League has way more prestige than the Summer Olympics for football.
I think this is the case for most of the well-known team sports. The professional teams pull players from around the world, and have lots of experience playing together.
Plus the professional teams are have intentionally developed rosters. In the Olympics, if it turns out that Canada has produced the two best goalies this year, then the world's second best goalie will be benched unless there's an injury.
I don't watch football at all, but fifa world cup and champions league are the ones everybody around me watches, from friends to random people, to our cities being half-empty (except the bars with TVs) during final matches.
Olympics are more "meh" and not something people really cared about.
Says who? This is strictly down to prestige.
Btw, association football is played at the Summer Olympics. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's the highest competition for football. By prestige, that's the FIFA World Cup. By skill, it's perhaps the UEFA Champions League. [0]
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_Summer_Olympic...
[0] I don't know enough about football to say for sure that the Champions League has the highest skill on display. But even the Champions League has way more prestige than the Summer Olympics for football.