The USWNT looks to stay on top as Brazil tries to end an Olympic soccer drought

Soccer is Brazil’s national sport, but somehow the Seleçao has never won an Olympic soccer tournament. The Brazilians will hope that two superstars -- Neymar on the men’s side and Marta on the women’s side -- can finally bring the nation soccer gold. But while Neymar will be leading the probable favorites for the men, Marta will have the best soccer team in the world -- the Americans -- in her way.

Soccer at the Olympics is a little bit different from most other Olympic sports. For starters, it’s not exclusively played in the host city. There are too many games to be played in too short of a timespan for one field to survive all that soccer. So games will be hosted all around Brazil.

That will send Team USA to the mountains of Belo Horizonte and the jungle of Manaus to win gold. But nothing has stopped them recently: The USWNT hasn’t lost a meaningful game since the finals of the 2011 Women’s World Cup.

Japan served the team that loss and met the USWNT in the finals of the 2012 Olympics and last year’s World Cup, but failed to qualify for this year’s games. Instead, the American women will face perhaps their biggest challenge from France, FIFA’s third-ranked team, early on. The two teams share a draw and will meet in the group stage on Aug. 6.

The USWNT’s roster is pretty similar to the one that tore through all competitors last year at the World Cup, returning 10 of 11 starters from the lineup that demolished Japan 5-2 in the World Cup final. The 11th, Lauren Holiday, retired. So did Abby Wambach, the all-time leading goalscorer in international play.

Wambach’s departure represents the end of an era. During her reign, Team USA could launch balls forward and they knew Wambach would get her head on some of them. But by last year’s World Cup, they’d already figured out a way to survive without her. She mainly came on as a sub and only scored one of America’s 14 goals.

So for the most part, the gang is here. They’ve got the best player from the World Cup in Carli Lloyd and probably the best goalkeeper in the world in Hope Solo. There was worry that Megan Rapinoe’s recovery from a torn ACL would keep her from the tournament, but she’s on the roster. If they play as well as they did in the final last year, there is nobody on the planet that can beat them.

Soccer at the Olympics is also weird because the men’s tournament doesn’t actually feature the best soccer players in the world. To emphasize the importance of the World Cup, FIFA holds the Olympic tournament as a modified under-23 tournament. Each team is only allowed to send three players over the age of 23, but other than that, it’s a youth team. The U.S. men’s team might have qualified for a 16-team tournament, but the U.S. under-23 team did not.

Most elite players participated in a senior tournament like the European Championship this summer, but Neymar did not. With some prodding from his club team, FC Barcelona, he opted to sit out the Copa America and preserve himself for the Olympics. That was bad for Brazil’s top-level team -- they failed to make it out of the group stages, a shocking embarrassment for a team that should be among the best in the world, let alone South America -- but it gives Neymar a chance to make up for a pair of missed opportunities.

Neymar almost gave Brazil Olympic soccer gold four years ago when he was just 20, and although he was one of the best players in the tournament, they lost 2-1 to Mexico in the finals, settling for silver.

And he had a chance to get his nation the ultimate prize in soccer when the Brazilians hosted the 2014 World Cup. But he fractured a vertebra in the quarterfinals, and had to watch helplessly as Brazil’s dream World Cup ended in utter ignominy with a 7-1 semifinal defeat to Germany. Winning the Olympic gold won’t fully make up for that shameful defeat, but it would still be nice for Neymar to get a title in his homeland.

On the women’s side, Brazil has the best player of all time, Marta. She’s scored 100 goals in 101 games for Brazil and been named FIFA World Player of the Year five times. She scored three goals in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics as Brazil took silver in each.

The soccer tournaments start a bit before the official Olympic opening ceremony, with women kicking off on Aug. 3 and the men on Aug. 4, and they wrap up on the 19th and 20th, respectively.