Football at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's qualification

The women's qualification for football tournament at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Qualifications

A total of twelve teams will participate in the finals of the Olympic tournament for women. These finalists will be: [http://www.rsssf.com/tableso/ol2008q-women.html Women qualifying] . Retrieved on February 18, 2007.]
* The host nation (automatically qualified)
** fbw|CHN
* Three teams from Europe
** fbw|GER
** fbw|NOR
** fbw|SWE
* Two teams from South America¹
** fbw|ARG
** fbw|BRA
* Two teams from North America, Central America, and the Caribbean
**fbw|USA
**fbw|CAN
* One team from Africa¹
** fbw|NGA
* Two teams from Asia
** fbw|PRK
** fbw|JPN
* One team from Oceania
** fbw|NZL

¹ The second place teams from South American and African qualifying (Brazil and Ghana) played each other for the final spot.

UEFA (Europe)

UEFA announced that the 2007 Women's World Cup in the People's Republic of China will also serve as the qualifying tournament for the Olympics. Originally it was thought that, should England make the top three European teams, they would compete under the United Kingdom banner. However, on 6 September 2007, FIFA issued a press release indicating that England are ineligible to participate in the 2008 Olympics as England does not have its own Olympic Committee. [http://www.fifa.com/womenworldcup/organisation/media/newsid=589029.html#three+european+teams+will+book+their+spot+beijing+2008]

There has been some further confusion over the identity of the UEFA qualifiers stemming from conflicting media releases from UEFA and FIFA. The FIFA release noted that "teams eliminated at the end of the group phase will have the same ranking irrespective of their position, number of points or goal differences" implying that Sweden and Denmark will require a playoff for the final qualification spot. While UEFA initially stated that no playoff was required [http://www.uefa.com/competitions/wowc/news/kind=1/newsid=592048.html] , this was amended fairly rapidly [http://www.uefa.com/competitions/wowc/news/kind=1/newsid=592208.html] .

Caribbean

The system is a two round single round robin format, in October. Four groups will play the first round (3 groups of 4 and one group of 3), with the winners moving on to a second round group.

Group 1 (in Suriname)

October 7, 2007

October 5, 2007

October 3, 2007

Group 4 (in Cayman Islands)

October 28, 2007

April 2, 2008

Group B

April 6, 2008

:* = "withdrew"

First Round

First leg played on February 17 and February 18, 2007. Second leg will play from March 9 to March 11, 2007. Eritrea and Morocco will play their matches on March 10 and March 24, 2007.

July 28, 2007

December 9, 2007

=AFC (Asia)=

First Round

Group A will played as a two legs play-off with the winner advancing to the next round. Group B and Group C will played as a single round robin.

Group A

First leg played on February 17, 2007. Second leg played on February 25, 2007.

February 19, 2007

Group C

February 25, 2007

April 15, 2007

August 4, 2007

April 7, 2007

June 10, 2007

=OFC (Oceania)=

The 2007 Pacific Games was played as the first part of Oceania qualification for the 2008 Olympics. The winners of the Pacific Games, Papua New Guinea, met New Zealand in a playoff in March 2008 for a place in the Olympic Games Finals. This had originally been scheduled over two legs (on 8 March and 12 March) but the New Zealand leg was cancelled by mutual consent, leaving a single play-off match in Papua New Guinea.

References

External links

* [http://www.the-afc.com/english/competitions/olympic/fixtures/default.asp?action=women Fixtures and results on AFC's website (Women's tournament)]