Football at the 1956 Summer Olympics
In the XVI. 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne was held in a football competition. Due to numerous messages was performed a qualification round for the first time in the history of the Olympic football tournament. Yugoslavia reached for the third time in a row, the final, which was successfully accomplished by any team, but only won the silver medal again. The German amateur national team lost in the qualifiers against the eventual Olympic gold medalist Soviet Union. With India for the first time reached an Asian team a semi-final of the Olympic Football Tournament. The tournament was affected by cancellations, so that the second round was held with only three games.
Venues were the Olympic Park Stadium and Melbourne Cricket Ground in the final in front of 102,000 spectators took place, which until then the record crowd represented at the Olympic football tournaments and was not surpassed until 1968 in Mexico City with 105,000 spectators during the match for the bronze medal between Japan and Mexico. While FIFA does not count anymore these games as 'A' matches, considered eg the USSF these games in the statistics of their senior team.
Qualification
Total German team
Coach Sepp Herberger
The tournament
Second round
After qualifying eight games were drawn for the knockout stages on September 1, 1956 in Zurich. Five of the sixteen qualified teams said but from various reasons: China there was also the Republic of China admitted to the Olympics, Egypt because of the Suez Crisis, defending Hungary due to the invasion of the Soviet Union and the other for financial reasons. Therefore, the following five games did not take place ( the teams that were thus progressed without the game are in bold. )
The following three games were played: