Football at the 1980 Summer Olympics

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.

Sixteen teams were divided into four groups:
 * Group A (USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, Zambia)
 * Group B (Colombia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Czechoslovakia)
 * Group C (Algeria, Spain, GDR, Syria)
 * Group D (Costa Rica, Finland, Iraq, Yugoslavia)

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 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.

Venues
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 boycott, countries (in brackets) who qualified did not enter the final tournament. Spain sent a team under the IOC flag. The following 16 teams qualified for the 1980 Olympics football tournament:


 * Africa (CAF)
 * 🇳🇬 nigeria (replaces 🇬🇭 ghana)
 * (replaces 🇪🇬 egypt)
 * Asia (AFC)
 * 🇮🇶 iraq (replaces )
 * 🇸🇾 syrian arab republic (replaces 🇮🇷 iran)
 * North and Central America (CONCACAF)
 * 🇨🇺 cuba (replaces 🇺🇸 united states)
 * North and Central America (CONCACAF)
 * 🇨🇺 cuba (replaces 🇺🇸 united states)
 * 🇨🇺 cuba (replaces 🇺🇸 united states)


 * South America (CONMEBOL)
 * 🇨🇴 colombia
 * 🇻🇪 venezuela (replaces 🇦🇷 argentina)
 * Europe (UEFA)
 * 🇫🇮 finland (replaces 🇳🇴 norway)
 * 🇪🇸 spain
 * Hosting nation
 * 🇪🇸 spain
 * Hosting nation
 * Hosting nation

Match officials

 * Africa
 * Belaïd Lacarne
 * 🇳🇬 Bassey Eyo-Honesty
 * Nyrenda Chayu


 * Asia
 * 🇮🇶 Salim Naji Al-Hachami
 * Ali Abdulwahab Al Bannai
 * 🇸🇾 Marwan Arafat


 * North and Central America
 * Luis Paulino Siles
 * 🇨🇺 Ramón Calderón Castro
 * 🇲🇽 Mario Rubio Vázquez


 * South America
 * 🇧🇷 Romualdo Arppi Filho
 * 🇨🇴 Guillermo Velásquez
 * 🇵🇪 Enrique Labo Revoredo
 * 🇻🇪 José Castro Lozada


 * Europe
 * 🇦🇹 Franz Wöhrer
 * Vojtěch Christov
 * 🇫🇮 Anders Mattsson
 * 🇮🇹 Riccardo Lattanzi
 * Klaus Scheurell
 * 🇬🇧 Bob Valentine
 * 🇪🇸 Emilio Guruceta-Muro
 * 🇸🇪 Ulf Eriksson
 * André Daina
 * Marjan Raus
 * Eldar Azimzade

Quarter-finals
The USSR's first goal was scored from an offside, which was ignored by the referees.

Gold Medal match
The final was played in a hard rain for the third straight Olympics. Both teams played with ten players after the 58th minute after one player from each team was red-carded.

Goalscorers
With five goals, Sergey Andreyev of Soviet Union was the top scorer of the tournament. In total, 82 goals were scored by 52 different players, with only one of them credited as own goal.


 * 5 goals
 * Sergey Andreyev


 * 4 goals


 * Ladislav Vízek
 * Wolf-Rüdiger Netz
 * Fyodor Cherenkov


 * 3 goals


 * Frank Terletzki
 * Faisal Al-Dakhil
 * Yuri Gavrilov


 * 2 goals


 * Lakhdar Belloumi
 * Lubomír Pokluda
 * 🇮🇶 Falah Hassan
 * Jasem Yaqoub
 * Vagiz Khidiyatullin
 * Khoren Hovhannisyan
 * 🇻🇪 Iker Zubizarreta
 * Miloš Šestić
 * Zlatko Vujović
 * Zoran Vujović
 * Godfrey Chitalu


 * 1 goal


 * Rabah Madjer
 * Chaabane Merzekane
 * 🇨🇴 Benjamin Cardona
 * 🇨🇴 Carlos Molinares
 * Omar Arroyo
 * Jorge White
 * 🇨🇺 Luis Hernández
 * 🇨🇺 Ramón Núñez
 * 🇨🇺 Andrés Roldán
 * Jan Berger
 * Werner Lička
 * Zdeněk Šreiner
 * Jindřich Svoboda
 * 🇫🇮 Jouko Alila
 * 🇫🇮 Jouko Soini
 * 🇫🇮 Ari Tissari
 * Lothar Hause
 * Dieter Kühn
 * Werner Peter
 * Rüdiger Schnuphase
 * Wolfgang Steinbach
 * 🇮🇶 Hadi Ahmed
 * 🇮🇶 Hussein Saeed
 * Henry Nwosu
 * 🇪🇸 Marcos Alonso Peña
 * 🇪🇸 Hipólito Rincón
 * Oleg Romantsev
 * Sergey Shavlo
 * Volodymyr Bessonov
 * 🇻🇪 Robert Elie
 * Dževad Šećerbegović
 * Boro Primorac
 * Ante Miročević


 * Own goals
 * Mahboub Mubarak (playing against Nigeria)

Final ranking
Below the final ranking after the end of the tournament.