As the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) starts its quest for gold in the 2016 Summer Olympics, the players on the United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) sit at home and wonder what could have been if they had beaten Colombia in the playoff match.

Don’t worry too much, guys. You probably wouldn’t have done that well anyway. The American men have only qualified for the Olympics four times since 1992, and their best result was a fourth place finish in 2000.

Missing the Olympics isn’t the worst thing that could happen to the USMNT (it is nothing compared to the embarrassment that would come from missing a World Cup). The Olympic men’s tournament is actually an Under-23 tournament, and many federations don’t put much effort into qualifying for it.

Missing the tournament hurts the U.S. more than it hurts other nations, however. Countries like Spain, Uruguay and the Netherlands (who all failed to qualify for the Olympics) have youth training programs where their most gifted young athletes are constantly training to become the best in the world. For them, soccer at the Olympics is just another youth tournament.

We don’t have a training program like that in the United States. More often than not, our best male athletes chose to play more popular sports like football, baseball and basketball. For us, the Olympic soccer tournament is one of the only events from which our youth team can get true tournament experience.

We may be bored this summer because the USMNT missed the Olympics, but our failure to qualify could have a more negative impact on the future of the team.

The future starters of the USMNT are not gaining the tournament experience that they could have gained. This experience could have been valuable at the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Fans will blame Jurgen Klinsmann and his staff for this. They will call for him to lose his job.

Say he does get fired. Then what?

Will a new coach make the team better? That didn’t help when Bob Bradley replaced Bruce Arena, or when Klinsmann replaced Bradley.

The problem isn’t with the coaches; the problem is with the players.

Michael Bradley is an OK player, but he’s never going to be anything more than average. Clint Dempsey is good, but he is not Lionel Messi good. Chris Wondolowski is a garbage can with legs.

Despite our team’s shortcomings, we treat them like they are heroes. After the USMNT lost to a mediocre Belgium team in the Round of 16 match in the World Cup, we lauded them as heroes.

According to Colin Cowherd, we need to be meaner to the USMNT.

He says that people are constantly ridiculing players like LeBron James and Steph Curry, and the players become better to prove their critics wrong.

Maybe that’s what the USMNT's players need. If we tell them how bad they actually are, maybe we’ll stop losing matches to Jamaica and Honduras.

Whether or not that ever happens, our women are still the best in the world.