U.S.-Italy Match to Open Olympic Soccer : Summer Games: Kuwait, Poland also are in Group A. U.S. team will have to travel for Games 2 and 3 of round robin.

That the United States soccer team will face Italy in the opening game of the 1992 Olympic tournament July 24 can be attributed to the luck of the draw held here Sunday afternoon.

That no one complained can be attributed to how far the United States has come.

“Not long ago, this would have been a very bad game,” said Joseph Blatter, secretary-general of FIFA, the world governing body of soccer. “Three years ago it would have been bad for the United States and bad for soccer. But now we are looking quite forward to it.”

The 16 teams that qualified for the Olympics were divided into four first-round groups and assigned opponents during a 30-minute ceremony. FIFA presided over the draw, which was conducted by Blatter under the auspices of the Barcelona Olympic Organizing Committee (COOB) and telecast live throughout Europe.

The United States, which will be making its third consecutive appearance in the Olympics, was placed in Group A with Italy, Poland and Kuwait.

But, despite the pressure of facing a world power such as Italy on opening night, no one is selling the Americans short. The United States has dominated its opponents thus far in Olympic qualifying play, and Coach Lothar Osiander said he is pleased and excited with the results of the draw.

“The opening game--now that’s the best you can do,” Osiander said from Newfoundland, Canada, where the Olympic team lost to Canada, 2-1, on Sunday.

“Playing Italy in our first game doesn’t bother me one bit. This way, we can show ourselves right away and prove ourselves. But there’s no doubt this is a tough group. Italy and Poland are always talented, and Kuwait never went home during the (Gulf) war. They’ve spent the last two years playing as a unit all over the world.”

Group B is composed of Spain, Colombia, Egypt and Qatar. Group C includes Sweden, Paraguay, Morocco and South Korea.

Group D features Denmark and Ghana, along with the winners of two playoff series yet to be concluded: Holland vs. Australia and Honduras vs. Mexico.

Each team will play three first-round games, then the top two teams from each group will advance to the quarterfinals. From there, the tournament will proceed on a straight knockout basis through the Olympic final Aug. 8 at the 115,000-seat Camp Nou Stadium.

Italy will field a team that features several first division players, including scoring star Renato Buso of Fiorentina and Dino Baggio of Inter Milan, the younger brother of national hero Roberto Baggio. The team is actually Italy’s under-21 squad, which recently reached the finals of the European under-21 championships.

But Italian officials said Sunday they are simply hoping to get to the second round in Barcelona.

“I don’t know this U.S. team,” said Vincenzo Marinelli, chief administrator of the Italian Olympic team. “But we have played the Americans many times before, and we are friends. I think we will make a good game. Then both go through and everybody will be happy, OK?”

After more than 25 years of disputes over amateurism and eligibility in Olympic soccer, the 1992 tournament has been limited to players under 23. But the failure of such top teams as Germany, Argentina, Brazil or France to qualify has thrown open the possibility that outsiders such as Ghana, Morocco, Kuwait or even the United States--longtime youth soccer powers that are only now coming of age--could win their first Olympic medals.

“I think it’s impossible in a tournament like this to say what will happen,” said Sunil Gulati, chairman of the U.S. national team. “With so many traditional powers not qualifying, all you really want is to do is avoid Spain in your first game, I guess, and we did that. But this certainly opens up the doors for a lot of teams to do well.”

Although the United States is scheduled to play Italy at Camp Nou Stadium, COOB officials said the game would be switched across town to the smaller Sarria Stadium (capacity: 42,000) if advance ticket sales do not exceed 50,000. Of the 1.3 million tickets available for the Olympic soccer tournament, only 15% have been sold.

Either way, the United States will play its next two games 200 miles to the west in Zaragoza, facing Kuwait on July 27 and Poland on July 29. That means the U.S. team--which is based in the Olympic Village in Barcelona--will spend four of its first six days of competition on the road.

“Logistically, that could be a nightmare,” said Pat Vendrely, the U.S. national team administrator. “What we’re hoping to do is just stay in Zaragoza after our first game, rather than go back and forth to Barcelona. But this team is used to a lot of travel.”