Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics

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Football (soccer) at the 2008 Summer Olympics will be held in Beijing and several other cities in China from August 6 to August 24. Associations affiliated with FIFA are invited to send their full women's national teams and men's U-23 teams to participate. Men's teams are allowed to augment their squad with three players over the age of 23.

For these games, the men will compete in a 16-team tournament, and the women will compete in a 12-team tournament. Football preliminaries actually commence two days before the official opening of the games (August 8), and last right through to closing day.

Venues

Aside from the host city Beijing, football matches are scheduled to take place in three other cities:

• Beijing: Olympic Sports Center Stadium
• Beijing: Workers' Stadium
• Qinghuangdao: Qinhuangdao Olympic Sports Centre Stadium
• Shanghai: Shanghai Stadium
• Tianjin: Tianjin Olympic Centre Stadium

Qualifying Criteria

An NOC may enter up to 1 men's team and up to 1 women's team in football competitions.

Football Men

Main article: Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's qualification

Competition	Date	Venue	Vacancies	Qualified
Host Nation			1	China
AFC Preliminary Competition	Feb 2006 - Nov 2007	-	3
CAF Preliminary Competition	Sep 2006 - Mar 2008	-	3
CONCACAF Preliminary Competition	Aug 2007 -	-	2
2007 South American Youth Championship	January 7-28, 2007	Paraguay	2	Brazil Argentina
OFC Preliminary Competition	23 March 2008	TBD	1
2007 UEFA U-21 Championship	June 10-23, 2007	Netherlands	4	Netherlands Serbia Belgium Italy
TOTAL			16

Football Women

Main article: Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's qualification

Competition	Date	Venue	Vacancies	Qualified
Host Nation	-	-	1	China
AFC Preliminary Competition	Feb 2007 - Aug 2007	-	2	Japan Korea DPR
CAF Preliminary Competition	Oct 2006 - Mar 2008	-	1
CONCACAF Preliminary Competition	Oct 2007 - Early 2008	Haiti	2
2006 Sudamericano Femenino	November 2006	Argentina	1	Argentina
OFC Women's Olympic Qualifying	March, 2008	TBD	1
UEFA (2007 FIFA Women's World Cup)*	September 10-30, 2007	China	2*	Germany Norway
UEFA Playoff (Denmark vs. Sweden)	TBD	Denmark Sweden	1*
CAF-CONMEBOL Playoff (??? vs Brazil)	TBD	TBD	1
TOTAL			12

* Note - The three best ranked European teams at the FIFA Women's World Cup will qualify. England cannot qualify so if England was among the best three European teams the fourth European team would advance. Sweden and Denmark will play a play-off for the third Olympics spot [1]. Though there are colliding press releases with UEFA stating that Sweden qualified and FIFA indicating before the tournament that this would not be the case by now. The playoff will presumably be a two-legged playoff whit one game played in Denmark and the other in Sweden.

References

• "Sports Competition Schedule". BOCOG. 2006-04-17. Retrieved 2006-08-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• "Athletics". (Sports). International Olympic Committee. 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |work= (help)
• "Programme of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Beijing 2008" (pdf). International Olympic Committee. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
• Federation Internationale de Football Association
• RSSSF

External Links

Cycling at Beijing 2008 @ RubaiSport