Asian soccer teams at the Olympics

For Asian soccer teams , the Olympic Games were the first appearance on a world level. While South Korea was the first Asian country to qualify for a soccer World Cup in 1954, China and Japan took part in the Olympic Games as early as 1936. There has been an Asian qualifying tournament since 1956. Japan achieved the greatest success in 1968 when they won bronze in Mexico City . Since then, Asian teams have been able to qualify for the final tournaments, but they did not get past the quarter-finals. This article looks at the performance of Asian teams between 1972 (first games after the bronze medal of Japan) and 1988 (last games before the introduction of the U-23 rule)

The performances of the Asian national soccer teams at the Olympic Games between 1972 and 1988 .

Munich 1972

Iran , Burma and Malaysia qualified . None of these teams survived the group stage.

Iran was hopelessly inferior in its group with Hungary , Denmark and Brazil . The games against Hungary and Denmark were clearly lost with 0: 5 and 0: 4. On the last day of the match, however, the Brazilians, who had not played with the senior national team, were beaten 1-0 and were third in the group.

Burma did not have an easy group with the tournament favorites USSR as well as Mexico and Sudan , the team was defeated by the Soviet Union and Mexico only 1-0 each; the last game against Sudan they won 2-0.

Malaysia met hosts Germany , as well as Morocco and the USA. They lost 3-0 to Germany and 6-0 to Morocco. The USA defeated Malaysia 3-0, but the team was eliminated anyway.

Montreal 1976

Qualified were: Iran, Israel and North Korea

All three Asian participants were able to qualify for the quarter-finals. Iran failed there against the Soviet Union (1: 2), Israel against Brazil (1: 4) and North Korea against Poland (0: 5).

Moscow 1980

Qualified were: Iraq , Kuwait and Malaysia (Malaysia boycotted the games and was replaced by Syria.)

While Syria had already failed in the preliminary round after a 0: 5 against the GDR, Iraq and Kuwait were able to qualify for the quarter-finals. In the quarter-finals, they had to admit defeat to hosts USSR and defending champions GDR.

Los Angeles 1984

Qualified were: Iraq , Qatar and Saudi Arabia .

All three teams were eliminated in the preliminary round.

See: Statistics

Seoul 1988

Qualified were: South Korea , Iraq and China .

All three teams were eliminated in the preliminary round. Iraq alone won a 3-0 win against Guatemala.