Host country USSR Venue(s) 5 (in 4 host cities) | Dates 20 July - 2 August Runners-up East Germany | |
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Teams 16 (from 6 confederations) Champions Czechoslovakia (1st title) |
The football tournament at the 1980 Summer Olympics started on July 20 and ended on August 2. Only one event, the men's tournament, was contested. A few of the countries which qualified did not participate because of the boycotting such as Malaysia.
Contents
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,".
The football tournament was the most attended event on these Olympics: 1,821,624 spectators watched 32 matches of it at the stadiums.
Qualification
Due to the American-led political boycott, some countries (in brackets) who qualified did not enter the Final Tournament. The following 16 teams qualified for the 1980 Olympics football tournament:
Medalists
Remark:country names are given in the form they were used in the official documents of the IOC in 1980.
Goalscorers
With five goals, Sergey Andreyev of Soviet Union is the top scorer in the tournament. In total, 82 goals were scored by 52 different players, with only one of them credited as own goal.
Final ranking
Below the final ranking after the end of the tournament.