BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS : Why Opening Day Came a Day Early : Soccer: Four games were played before the opening ceremony to accommodate a 32-game tournament. Only about 12,000 see U.S.-Italy.

Are we in the right place? The 1992 Olympics begin and there are about 100,000 empty seats in the stadium. And no Olympic flame. No parade of nations. No heads of state or royalty or police escorts. No fireworks or solemn oaths or native dances. Merely a preliminary round soccer game, between what amounts to the junior varsity teams from the United States and Italy.

Is it siesta time?

Of course, there is an explanation of sorts. Scheduling actual Olympic competition the day before the opening ceremony not only is unprecedented, but also a bit risky. Especially when Olympic rules have changed to limit its soccer tournament to players under 23; that’s like giving the discerning European soccer fan the Toledo Mud Hens instead of the Oakland Athletics.

Making matters worse was the fact that the first of four soccer games Friday (Italy beat the United States, 2-1) was staged at revered Nou Camp (it means “Our Field” in the Catalan language), the home of the FC Barcelona club and the second-largest soccer stadium in the world, next to Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana.

Though soccer offers some of the cheapest tickets at these Games, from $9 to $35, spectators were so consumed with apathy for the late afternoon matchup that the crowd was announced at only 18,000, and most observers believed that it was closer to 12,000.

Even officials of FIFA, the sport’s worldwide governing body and the administrators of the tournament here, were so uninterested in the Olympic opener that they began their postgame news conference with a 10-minute briefing on the “Maradona situation”--stating FIFA’s position on when and how and if it would intervene if Diego Maradona, the world’s highest-paid soccer player from Argentina, doesn’t honor his current contract with the Italian League team, Napoli.

Actually, the scheduling of the U.S.-Italy soccer game on Friday didn’t seem to be such a bad idea. The organizers of the Barcelona Games, faced with an expanded 16-nation Olympic soccer tournament, were unable to reasonably fit the 32 games over 16 days, and since they didn’t want to play any games on the day of the opening ceremony, they scheduled four on Friday.

At least the U.S. players appreciated the whole scene, which didn’t amount to much more than small clumps of American and Italian fans, waving their flags and chanting and taking advantage of the good acoustics of the three-tiered stadium. The game could have been played in the smaller (50,000-seat) Sarria Stadium, down the street, where it would have presented less of an empty feeling. But FIFA officials insisted on staging their Olympic opener at the more prestigious site.

“Oh, yeah,” said U.S. forward Cobi Jones, who continues to try to explain the inexplicable coincidence of having the same name as official Olympic mascot, Cobi, “it was very exciting. Another level up.”

Sunday, the U.S. team buses to Zaragoza, 200 miles away, for its next two games. But first they will take part in tonight’s real first event, the opening ceremony.

Around Barcelona Thursday and Friday night, genuine excitement for the Olympics was building.

About 300,000 greeted the arrival of the Olympic flame, when it came by sailboat into the Barcelona Harbor from the island of Mallorca at about 10:30 p.m. and made its way from the Christopher Columbus statue and up the Bohemian strollway, Las Ramblas, beginning a 4 1/2-hour trip circling the city.

By the time the torch runners reached Nou Camp, at 2:30 a.m., the crowds were far larger than the handfuls that sampled U.S.-Italy soccer some seven hours earlier.

Thousands and thousands of Catalan flags--with the four horizontal red stripes symbolizing 9th-Century Catalan warrior Wilfred the Hairy dragging his four bloodied fingers across his gilded shield in a dying patriotic gesture--were waved along the torch route.

The night before, when Games organizers staged an opening ceremony rehearsal at Estadi Montjuic, the main Olympic Stadium, the place was packed.