Football at the 1980 Summer Olympics

1980 Men's Olympic football tournament
Tournament details
Host countrySoviet Union
Dates20 July – 2 August 1980
Teams16 (from 5 confederations)
Venue(s)5 (in 4 host cities)
Final positions
Champions Czechoslovakia (1st title)
Runners-up East Germany
Third place Soviet Union
Fourth place Yugoslavia
Tournament statistics
Matches played32
Goals scored82 (2.56 per match)
Attendance1,821,624 (56,926 per match)
Top scorer(s)Soviet Union Sergey Andreyev (5 goals)
1976
1984

The football tournament at the 1980 Summer Olympics started on 20 July and ended on 2 August. Only one event, the men's tournament, was contested. Seven qualified countries did not participate, joining the American-led boycott in protest of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.[1]

Sixteen teams were divided into four groups:

In the technical report following the competition, FIFA reported that: "Compared with the 1979 World Youth Tournament in Japan and the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina, the standard of football at the Olympic Football Tournament was generally of an inferior quality".[2]

The tournament was primarily hosted by Moscow and Leningrad in the Russian SFSR, with some group stage games in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR and Minsk, Byelorussian SSR.

  1. ^ "Football at the 1980 Moscow Summer Games". Sports Reference. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 27 October 2018.
  2. ^ "FIFA Technical Report - 1980 Olympics Football Tournament" (PDF). FIFA. 1980. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 December 2011. Retrieved 26 February 2014.