Football at the 1964 Summer Olympics

Football at the 1964 Summer Olympics
	Football at the 1964 Olympics on a stamp of Japan
Tournament details
Host country	Japan
Dates	11–23 October 1964
Teams	14 (from 5 confederations)
Venue(s)	8 (in 4 host cities)
Final positions
Champions	Hungary (2nd title)
Runners-up	Czechoslovakia
Third place	United Team of Germany
Fourth place	Egypt
Tournament statistics
Matches played	29
Goals scored	123 (4.24 per match)
Top scorer(s)	Ferenc Bene (12 goals)
	← 1960 1968 →

Last updated August 27, 2025

The football competition at the 1964 Summer Olympics started on 11 October and ended on 23 October. Only one event, the men's tournament, was contested. The tournament features 14 men's national teams from six continental confederations. The 14 teams are drawn into two groups of four and two groups of three and each group plays a round-robin tournament. At the end of the group stage, the top two teams advanced to the knockout stage, beginning with the quarter-finals and culminating with the gold medal match at the Olympic Stadium on 23 October 1964. There was also three consolation matches played by losing quarter-finalists. The winner of these matches placed fifth in the tournament.^[1]

Qualification

Regional qualifying tournaments were held. During the CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament among South American national teams, a riot in Lima during the decisive Peru–Argentina match, after Peru's equalizing goal in the last minutes was disallowed by the referee, resulted in 328 deaths, which was considered the worst football disaster in history.^[2] Due to the riot, further CONMEBOL matches were not played that year, except for a playoff between Brazil and Peru (won by Brazil), and Argentina qualified instead of Peru.

16 teams qualified, and were divided into four groups:

Group A (United Team of Germany (which was de facto East Germany), Romania, Mexico, Iran)
Group B (Hungary, Yugoslavia, Morocco, ~~Korea D.P.R.~~ )
Group C (Czechoslovakia, United Arab Republic (Egypt), Brazil, Korea Rep.)
Group D (Japan, Ghana, Argentina, ~~Italy~~ )

The two best teams of each group competed in the quarter-finals.

Ultimately, the tournament was played two teams short:

Italy were disqualified as their team was not amateur; Poland, who Italy had beaten to qualify, declined to take Italy's place due to a lack of preparation time.
North Korea withdrew from the entire Games before the Opening Ceremony after Japanese immigration officials refused six of their athletes entry.

Africa (3)

Asia (4)

Europe (6)

North America (1)

South America (2)

Venues

Tokyo
Prince Chichibu Football Field (1)	National Olympic Stadium (2)	Komazawa Olympic Park Stadium (3)
Capacity: 17,569	Capacity: 71,556	Capacity: 20,780

Saitama	30km 19miles 4 1 3 2 5
Ōmiya Football Field (4)
Capacity: 14,392

Yokohama
Mitsuzawa Football Field (5)
Capacity: 10,102

Medalists

Gold	Silver	Bronze
Hungary	Czechoslovakia	United Team of Germany
Ferenc Bene Tibor Csernai János Farkas József Gelei Kálmán Ihász Sándor Katona Imre Komora Ferenc Nógrádi Dezső Novák Árpád Orbán Károly Palotai Antal Szentmihályi Gusztáv Szepesi Zoltán Varga	Jan Brumovský Ludovít Cvetler Ján Geleta František Knebort Karel Knesl Karel Lichtnégl Vojtech Masný Štefan Matlák Ivan Mráz Karel Nepomucký Zdeněk Pičman František Schmucker Anton Švajlen Anton Urban František Valošek Josef Vojta Vladimír Weiss	Gerd Backhaus Wolfgang Barthels Bernd Bauchspieß Gerhard Körner Otto Fräßdorf Henning Frenzel Dieter Engelhardt Herbert Pankau Manfred Geisler Jürgen Heinsch Klaus Lisiewicz Jürgen Nöldner Peter Rock Klaus-Dieter Seehaus Hermann Stöcker Werner Unger Klaus Urbanczyk Eberhard Vogel Manfred Walter Horst Weigang

Note: Only players from the East Germany represented the joint Olympic team of United Team of Germany.

Squads

First round

Group A

Pos	Team v t e	Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts	Qualification
1	United Team of Germany	3	2	1	0	7	1	+6	5	Advanced to knockout stage
2	Romania	3	2	1	0	5	2	+3	5	Advanced to knockout stage
3	Mexico	3	0	1	2	2	6	−4	1
4	Iran	3	0	1	2	1	6	−5	1

Source: RSSSF

11 October 1964

15:00

United Team of Germany	4–0	Iran
Bauchspiess 7' Vogel 20', 63' Frenzel 44'	Report

Mitsuzawa Stadium , Yokohama

Attendance: 12,671

Referee: Eunápio de Queiroz (Brazil)

11 October 1964