Competitors 135 from 11 nations | ||
 | ||
Venues Stockholm Olympic Stadium
Tranebergs Idrottsplats
Råsunda Idrottsplats Dates June 29 (first round)
June 30 (quarterfinals)
July 2 (semifinals)
July 4 (final, bronze match) | ||
Football at the 1912 Summer Olympics was one of the 102 events at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the fourth time that football was on the Olympic schedule. The tournament was contested between 11 nations, all of them from Europe, with Great Britain winning the gold medals (the IOC accredits Great Britain and Ireland with the medal). Replicating the 1908 tournament, Denmark won silver medals and the Netherlands won bronze medals.
Contents
Just as the Football Association had organised the 1908 Olympic football competition in London, the Swedish Football Association ran the 1912 event.
The games took place in three different stadiums from June 29 to July 5, 1912. From the eleven games of the main tournament, two were played at Tranebergs Idrottsplats in a suburb of Stockholm, five games including the bronze medal match took place at Råsunda Idrottsplats also outside Stockholm, while four games including the final were held at the Olympiastadion.
Medal summary
The database of the International Olympic Committee lists only the eleven players as medalists for each nation, who played in the first match for their nation. The following list contains these eleven players, as well as all other players who made at least one appearance for their team during the tournament.
Participants
The tournament attracted a record 11 entries, all of them from Europe. France and Belgium withdrew from the event shortly before the draw. The entry of Bohemia was not accepted, because only nations and associations affiliated to the FIFA were allowed to enter teams. The Football Association entered a Great Britain national amateur team to represent Great Britain.
A total of 135+28 footballers from 11 nations competed at the Stockholm Games:
Amateur definitions
The definition for the football competition was:
An amateur is one:
Course of the tournament
In the first round of the tournament, the hosts from Sweden went out in the opening match against the Netherlands. Fighting back from a 1-3 deficit with half an hour to go, Sweden only lost 4-3 on a goal scored by Dutch player Jan Vos in the extra time of the English referee. At Tranebergs Idrottsplats, Austrian football pioneer Hugo Meisl was the referee as Finland beat Italy also in extra time.
In the second round, Finland won again, this time beating Russia, who had received a bye in the first round. By this stage, the Great Britain team entered the contest, drawn to play against Hungary at Olympiastadion. Great Britain was captained by Vivian Woodward, a record-scoring centre-forward from Chelsea, who had formed part of Great Britain's gold medal winning side of the 1908 Summer Olympics. Led by forward Harold Walden, who scored six goals, Great Britain convincingly defeated Hungary with 7-0.
In the semi-final round, Walden scored all four goals, as Great Britain defeated Finland 4-0. In the other semi-final Denmark beat the Netherlands 4-1; the Dutch consolation goal put behind goalkeeper Sophus Hansen by Danish defender Harald Hansen. For the second successive time, the final would pair Great Britain with Denmark, and like in 1908, the team representing Great Britain would win gold medals, although this game would be closer than the 4-2 score-line suggested. With no rule allowing substitutions, Denmark played with one player less from the 30th minute of the game, when Charles Buchwald was injured.
A consolation tournament run, conjunctively, with the tournament proper paired the losers of the first and second rounds, and was eventually won by Hungary. German player Gottfried Fuchs equalled the record for most goals in an international (set by Dane Sophus Nielsen in the 1908 Olympics) with 10 goals for Germany against Russia, a record that stood until 2001.