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 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,". 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) (replaces ) (replaces ) Asia (AFC) (replaces ) (replaces ) North and Central America (CONCACAF) (replaces ) South America (CONMEBOL) (replaces ) Europe (UEFA) (replaces ) 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 Squads Final tournament First round Group A Group B Group C Group D Bracket Quarter-finals Semi-finals Bronze Medal match 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. Medalists 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