Football tournament draw at the 2020 Olympics to be held in April

28 January 2020– The South African Men’s Olympic Team will know who they face in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games in April when the draw for the final tournament takes place on 20 April at NHK Hall in Tokyo.

Football at the Olympics will be played from 22 July to 8 August 2020 in Japan.

Already 12 nations, including the hosts, have qualified.

South Africa booked their spot alongside CAF sides Egypt and Ivory Coast. Also going into the hat are France, Germany, Romania and Spain (UEFA); New Zealand (OFC) as well as Australia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea (AFC).

Completing the 16 nations are the four remaining countries, which will come from CONMEBOL (2) and CONCACAF (2).

Brazil are the men’s defending champions.

The competition consists of two stages:

  1. The 16 teams will be drawn into four groups of four teams
  2. A group stage followed by a knockout stage
  3. Hosts Japan are automatically seeded into Pot 1 and assigned to position A1
  4. The remaining teams are seeded into their respective pots based on their results in the last five Olympics (more recent tournaments weighted more heavily), with bonus points awarded to confederation champions
  5. No group can contain more than one team from each confederation.

A total of seven stadiums will be used in Japan:

1. National Stadium, Shinjuku                                 60,102 (capacity)

2. Tokyo Stadium, Chofu                                          48,000

3. Saitama Stadium, Saitama                                  62,000

4. International Stadium, Yokohama                    70,000

5. Ibaraki Kashima Stadium, Kashima                   42,000

6. Miyagi Stadium, Rifu (Miyagi)                              48,000

7. Sapporo Dome, Sapporo (Hokkaido)                    42,000

MEN’S QUALIFIED TEAMS:

Host country 7 September 2013N/A1 Japan
2019 UEFA European U-21 Championship 16–30 June 2019 Italy San Marino4 France Germany Romania Spain
2019 OFC Men’s Olympic Qualifying Tournament 21 September – 5 October 2019 Fiji1 New Zealand
2019 Africa U-23 Cup of Nations 8–22 November 2019 Egypt3 Egypt Ivory Coast South Africa
2020 AFC U-23 Championship 8–26 January 2020 Thailand3 Australia Saudi Arabia South Korea
2020 CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament 18 January – 9 February 2020 Colombia2TBD
2020 CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Championship 20 March – 1 April 2020 Mexico2TBD