Football at the 2020 Summer Olympics – Women's tournament

2020 Women's Olympic Football Tournament
Tournament details
Host country	Japan
Dates	21 July – 6 August 2021
Teams	12 (from 6 confederations)
Venue(s)	7 (in 6 host cities)

The women's football tournament at the 2020 Summer Olympics will be held from 21 July to 6 August 2021.[1] Originally, it was to be held from 22 July to 7 August 2020, but the Summer Olympics were postponed to the following year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the official name of the games remains the 2020 Summer Olympics.[2] It will be the seventh edition of the women's Olympic football tournament. Together with the men's competition, the 2020 Summer Olympics football tournament will be held at seven stadiums in six cities in Japan, including Olympic host city Tokyo, which will host the women's gold medal match at the National Stadium. There are no player age restrictions for teams participating in the women's competition.

Germany, the defending champions, failed to qualify for the tournament after being eliminated in the quarter-finals of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup.[3]

Qualification

In addition to host nation Japan, eleven women's national teams will qualify from six separate continental confederations. The Organising Committee for FIFA Competitions ratified the distribution of spots at their meeting on 14 September 2017.[4]

For the first time, as per the agreement between the four British football associations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) for the women's team, Great Britain attempted to qualify for the Olympics through England's performance in the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup (a procedure already successfully employed by Team GB in field hockey and rugby sevens). The team's only previous appearance was in the 2012 tournament, in which they qualified automatically as hosts. Great Britain succeeded in qualifying, as England were among the three best European teams.[5] Scotland also qualified for the World Cup but, under the agreement whereby the highest ranked home nation was nominated to compete for the purposes of Olympic qualification, their performance was not be taken into account.[6][7]

Means of qualification	Ref.	Dates²	Venue²	Berths	Qualified
Host country		7 September 2013	N/A	1	Japan
2018 Copa América	[8]	4–22 April 2018	Chile	1	Brazil
2018 OFC Nations Cup	[9]	18 November – 1 December 2018	New Caledonia	1	New Zealand
2019 FIFA Women's World Cup (as UEFA qualifying)	[10]	7 June – 7 July 2019	France	3	Great Britain Netherlands Sweden
2020 CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Championship	[11]	28 January – 9 February 2020	United States	2	Canada United States
2020 CAF Olympic Qualifying Tournament	[12]	5–10 March 2020	Various	1	Zambia
2020 AFC Olympic Qualifying Tournament	[13]	6–11 March 2020 & 8–13 April 2021	Various	2	Australia TBD
CAF–CONMEBOL play-off		April 2021	Various	1	TBD
Total				12

^2 Dates and venues are those of final tournaments (or final round of qualification tournaments), various qualification stages may precede matches at these specific venues.

Venues

The tournament will be held in seven venues across six cities:

Squads

The women's tournament is a full international tournament with no restrictions on age. Each team has to submit a squad of 18 players, two of whom must be goalkeepers. Each team can also name a list of four alternate players, who can replace any player in the squad in case of injury during the tournament.[14]

Match officials

In June 2020, FIFA approved the use of the video assistant referee (VAR) system for the tournament.[15]

Draw

The twelve teams will be drawn into three groups of four teams. The hosts Japan are automatically seeded into Pot 1 and assigned to position E1, while the remaining teams are seeded into their respective pots based on the FIFA Women's World Rankings released on 27 March 2020. No group can contain more than one team from each confederation.[16] As Great Britain are not a FIFA member and therefore do not have a ranking, their seeding method will be decided by FIFA.

Group stage

The competing countries will be divided into three groups of four teams, denoted as groups E, F and G to avoid confusion with the groups of the men's tournament (which use designations A to D). Teams in each group will play one another in a round-robin basis, with the top two teams of each group and the two best third-placed teams advancing to the quarter-finals.

All times are local, JST (UTC+9).[17]

Tiebreakers

The ranking of teams in the group stage is determined as follows:[14]

Points obtained in all group matches (three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a defeat);
Goal difference in all group matches;
Number of goals scored in all group matches;
Points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
Goal difference in the matches played between the teams in question;
Number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;
Fair play points in all group matches (only one deduction could be applied to a player in a single match):
- Yellow card: −1 point;
- Indirect red card (second yellow card): −3 points;
- Direct red card: −4 points;
- Yellow card and direct red card: −5 points;
Drawing of lots.

Group E

Pos	Team	Qualification
1	Japan (H)	Advance to knockout stage
2	E2	Advance to knockout stage
3	E3	Possible knockout stage based on ranking
4	E4

First match(es) will be played on 21 July 2021. Source: FIFA
Rules for classification: Group stage tiebreakers
(H) Host.

21 July 2021