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.[2]
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.[3] 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:
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.
With 12 goals, Ferenc Bene of Hungary is the top scorer in the tournament. In total, 123 goals were scored by 56 different players, with only one of them credited as own goal.
The preliminary round was conducted by breaking the 15 teams into two groups of 7 and 8 teams. The groups then played a round-robin tournament with each team playing the other teams in the group once. 2 points were awarded for a win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 for a loss. The top two teams from each group advanced to the semifinals while the third and fourth played in consolation semifinals.
The top two teams in each of the groups played in the 1st-4th semifinals, with the winner of each group playing the second-place team in the other group. The third and fourth team in each group played in the consolation semifinals
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