Football at The 1924 Summer Olympics - Final Tournament

Final Tournament

The Games competition was assisted by a Preliminary Round which featured the silver-medallists from the 1920 Games, Spain in a game with Italy. Since that time Spain had only lost once and that by a single goal away to Belgium and had drawn 0-0 with the Italians in March 1924. There was hardly anything between themselves and Italy when they met, this time, at the Colombes Stadium; Pedro Vallana's own goal handing victory to Italy.

Otherwise there were wildly lopsided results in the opening round. Hungary put five past Poland, the Swiss sent poor Lithuania on their way, 9-0. But the big talking point was the play of the Uruguayans played first-rate football, combining speed, skill and perfect ball-control. By marrying short passing to intelligent positional play, they made the ball do all the work, and so kept their opponents on the run wrote Joy. The Uruguayans sailed past Yugoslavia by seven clear goals, then overcame the United States by three goals to nil; only after the Americans had shut bolt their defence. Their team was fundamentally that with which they would dominate World football for the next 6 years.

In the first round Czechoslovakia (following their ill-judged decision to walk off the field in 1920) enhanced their reputation as Olympic 'bad sports' during an ill-tempered fixture against an equally unforgiving Swiss; the game went fruitlessly to extra-time. One Czech was sent off, and the Norwegian referee had to call for order during a break. For the replay, Abegllen took the captain's duties and all was different; Switzerland winning by the single goal. Otherwise there were two big shocks, the first went Egypt's way; 3-0 to the good against Hungary. The second saw Sweden annihilate the reigning gold-medallists, Belgium, quite improbably, 8-1. Oscar Verbeeck's own goal set the Swedes on their way; Sven Rydell's hat-trick the feature of the match.

The Swedish outside-left Rudolf Kock (who would become chairman of the selectors in 1948 working alongside George Raynor), would have another fine game against Egypt where Sweden won 5-0. France and Holland had been similarly dominant in the first round but that was put into perspective when Uruguay beat France 5-1 to claim a semi-final place.

In another quarter-final Italy went out to Switzerland disputing a winner by Max Abegglen, who converted a break-away goal. The Italians protested that he had been off-side. The referee Johannes Mutters, refused to alter the decision of his linesman; a jury upheld the judgement.

There was further dispute in the semi-final where Holland (coached by the old Blackburn Rovers' Cup hero William Townley) took a first half lead against Uruguay through Feyenoord's Kees Pijl. With twenty minutes to go Pedro Cea scored an equaliser and with less than ten Georges Vallat, the French referee, awarded Uruguay a penalty. Suddenly bedlam. FIFA reports: "the Netherlands protested the ruling of a penalty kick that turned out to be the winning goal but then Uruguay protested against the Olympic Committee's selection of a Dutch referee for the final. To appease the South Americans, the committee pulled the name of a final referee out of a hat and picked out a Frenchman, Marcel Slawick".