Olympics from 1948 to 1980

1st Official Post
    • Official Post

    Hi everyone, I need some opinions on this one.

    The big question is: Do we include games and data from some Olympic teams from this period. It would all be non-FIFA of course, but all the eastern (and some western) european, asian african, (most?) north american and oceanian teams seem to count these all full national team games and seem to have played with their best teams available nearly all of the time.

    There are two different opinions here at NFT. I would include the games of these teams as non-fifa games, and siebenW would not include them at all.

    So please, give this one a think and then your opinion. Thank you so much.

    I Include them in my records, for all countries in CONCACAF, CAF, OFC and AFC regions. Europe is a bit of a grey area; some countries list them as A matches, some do not. As far as I know, no South American countries regard Olympic games in this period as full internationals.

    Let's start with some background information:

    Football at the Olympics:

    1896 - 1904: "demonstration" football for local low tier club or college teams
    1908 - 1928: World Cup predecessor for full national teams
    1936 : World Cup alternate for full national teams
    1948 - 1980: "amateur" era for restricted national teams
    1984 - 1988: restriction for South America and Europa, full national teams for CONCACAF, CAF, AFC, OFC
    1992 - date: "youth" competition: u23 teams + 3 overaged players

    As a page for national teams NFT doesn't feature the early editions from 1896 to 1904. The editions from 1908 to 1928 are already online. While the 1984 and 1988 editions are online with UEFA and CONMEBOL teams as non-editable "Olympic" teams, as these had been restricted: they weren't allowed to field "World Cup" players. From 1992 on, NFT doesn't cover the Olympics anymore for being a "youth" tournament.

    All that so good. I think the next edition NFT should cover is the 1936 tournament. But the question now is about 1948 to 1980. To be fair, that "amateur" restriction had been from the very beginning, but back then in 1908 basically just some English top players were considered as "professional", with the English FA having an on and off relationship with FIFA during the first half of the 20th century anyway, the olympic tournament was basically the World Cup predecessor until FIFA launched their own World Cup, and since then the Olympic tournament kept declining. The 1936 tournament was still good being played by full strengths national teams. I may would do the cut here and set WWII as end date. The 1948 tournament seems to have good squads, while starting from 1952 in became obvious that nations like Germany, France, and so on sent 2nd string squads, ending up fielding amateur sides in later tournaments. Here the "amateur" status started to seriously affect the team strengths. On the other side, various nations kept on fielding their best players by declaring their local top tier leagues "amateur" leagues. Sometimes a bit ridiculous in cases like Siegfried Haltman had a contract by a regional Brazilian team, for which he didn't play any official league match. After an opponent's complaint, Surinam's match were rewarded against them for fielding Haltman. Resulting in these Olympic "amateur" teams were basically home-based teams from countries declaring their "pro" league as amateur league.
    In my opinion, we should try to establish common standards counting for all countries equally. And here we had the restriction for all countries NOT sending their best players, excluding their pro players. Some did follow that rule, some others did play tricks. I know this resulted in many countries playing with actual full strength teams. One problem here would be to determinate which country to include and which not. I already see endless discussions here. Just looking at the squads from the final tournaments, we can see indeed many full strength squads especially in Africa or Central America, built up by full capped FIFA players. But on the other side, if we look at Gabon's 2012 or Fiji's 2016 squad, these are also mainly full capped FIFA players even with age restrictions. Far more difficult to judge will be the countries eliminated in qualifiers. Seeing all these missing matches for AfCoNs in the 1980s, I doubt we have good data for Olympic qualifiers. Ivory Coast was very proud of their pro league in the late 1970s. So, when they played olympics did they field a youth team or players from 2nd tier clubs or did they just declare their pro league as "amateur"? What about the Northern African countries? Morocco already had half of their 1962 WCq starters playing in Europe. Those were the players not allowed for Olympics. But the other half was able to start olympics as well. Is this now a team to consider or set as non-editable "Olympic" team? Still, we may have about 60%+ players in the NFT system for other matches. And what about fielding different strength teams in different rounds? For example, Canada fielded a more experimental side in their first round vs Bermuda, but in the 2nd round they fielded only full capped players during the 1984 edition, the edition we had common standards. What is now without a common standard for 1948 to 1980, setting their first round match as "Canada (Olympic)" and the second round "Canada" full team?
    Another problem I have is why opening tournaments just because some FAs do individually count these games as full national team matches? For example, Finland (and other european countries) also counts their 1984 and 1988 Olympic matches as official, as they weren't affected by the World Cup restriction for never qualifying for a World Cup. If we open now 1948 to 1980 because of individual FA statistics, shouldn't we add Finland's (and other's) 1984 and 1988, too? Similiar for Malawi (and other COSAFA countries) counting their 2009 and 2011 CHAN matches as official. I just fear that doing the olympics 1948 to 1980 will open so much more and bringing another endless discussions. Especially, as it is not easy to decide which national team to count and which not. It surely won't be that easy to exclude CONMEBOL as a whole and include CONCACAF, CAF, OFC and AFC as a whole while following eu-football.info's classification for UEFA. For example, Mexico did field (quite) an amateur side for the 1984 edition (when the amateur status was already lifted for CONCACAF nations), I really can't imagine them fielding a team we want to include for 1980 and earlier. At the end, I fear we will start another gigantic topic on NFT which will be stopped half done, similiar like Island Games. At the end, the missing menpower on NFT, not having much people actually working on the database, will remain the major problem. And my fear here, much time will be spend on non-FIFA amateur olympic games ... and the discussions about which country to include and which not, will relevant historic data with full FIFA caps is still missing.

    MY SUGESTION here, is to leave out the olympic matches for the moment, and concentrate on the missing historic data from 1923 to 1981. The next olympic tournament we should do is 1936. After that when we are done with 1936 historic data, or better after having the entire historic data, we can come back to the Olympics, starting from 1948, which was far more relevant in terms of full national teams than 1980, and work out the olympic tournaments from 1948 to 1980. Having all the other historic matches by then, we also have better facts to decide which Olympic team can be considered full national team and which not. Players already in the NFT system having just played Olympics may can be left in the national team for that year with either (0/0) matches/appearances or by (-/-). At the end, I am open for any kind of international matches, but by what Benjamin and archivist teached me, I understand that NFT is concentrating on the official FIFA data first trying not to get lost in too small details.

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/africancupofnations.png]African Nations Cup

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/asiacup.png]Asian Cup

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/copaamerica.png]Copa América

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/euro.png]European Championship

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/goldcup.png]Gold Cup

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/ofc.png]Oceania Cup

    [Blocked Image: https://www.national-football-teams.com/bundles/nftportofrontend/img/tournaments/worldcup.png]World Cup

    I think this is more important.Once the important things are done,then you can start playing tournaments with restrictions.If there will be is time and desire.

    • Official Post
    Quote from bakerrp

    I Include them in my records, for all countries in CONCACAF, CAF, OFC and AFC regions. Europe is a bit of a grey area; some countries list them as A matches, some do not. As far as I know, no South American countries regard Olympic games in this period as full internationals.

    That is pretty much how I understand it. I still think it would be good to include them, and I lean towards doing so. SiebenW and me have talking about this since forever, and we won't agree on this.

    I will wait some more days for more opinions to come along, but at the moment, I think that I will include them.

    • Official Post

    I made a decision, as we need one: We will include Olympics between 1948 and 1980. We will add all games from this olympic timer period as non-FIFA, and we will only add line-ups for the teams which consider these games to be full internationals. So not for any south american teams, and not for most western european teams. I will start with Iran today.

    Reading a bit more about the 1936 Olympics, I have to admit that the "amateur" era already began here. Actually, Olympics had always been an amateur competition, but the point by which it really starts to effect the competition was the introduction of the FIFA World Cup in 1930. And since then, already the 1936 Olympics lost their FIFA recognition, and hence already the 1936 edition will be non-FIFA matches here.
    For the 1936 Olympics several countries did not participate about the controversy about professionalism and not being allowed to field their best players. There are even 3 to 5 FAs who don't count the 1936 Olympics in their official senior team's statistic. Some like winning Italy do even if they were forced to field a weakener squad. Personally, I'd like to have all 1936 Olympic participants as editable team, but it already starts with the Great Britain team mixed of English and Scottish players, so that one is for sure uneditable. So, the question is about countries like Austria and Hungary. I'd like to have them, but I have to admit that the case about the 1936 Olympics is not as clear as I mentioned it in my original post, and maybe it's best to leave this decision to the webmaster. Hence this topic may can be extended from "Olympics from 1948 to 1980" to "Olympics from 1936 to 1980".

    • New

    Something general,

    for which your vidadi.tairov post is a good suggestion. But also this may explains sammy_rogers ' question regarding the 1st topic of his (very helpful) post.

    national-football-team (NFT) was launched in 2004 and since around 2008 decided to do match reports. Which was a great idea and is giving the website so much more information regarding the collected yearly stats we had before without any link to the actual played matches. While having the current matches since then, the webmaster's Benjamin approach is to do the history year-by-year from 2008 backwards. At the moment we are working on 1980. In the beginnings there had been a time also the early historic years from 1872 forward had been filled with match reports. At the moment we are standing at 1923, though the priority should now be working on the 1980 side downwards the 1970s as we still have contemporary witnesses still alive. Meaning for users that match data between 1923 and 1980 is still missing. Though there are certain matches from that time periode already online if an user with database access has taken care about these. That's why Euro final tournaments or some World Cup final tournaments had been online since long. Personally, my focus is on current players and not so much on history, though it's still fun. So, whenever reviewing a certain country I did add several of their historic matches to the NFT system even beyond the year-by-year approach. For several countries doing more historic matches is a real start from Zero sometimes, especially for the countries without prepared squads, when (nearly) every player has to be created, leading to clubs to be created and at the end tracking the yearly club pages farer back to the past. I think Vidadi's suggestion of concentrating on major tournament will help to create at least the most important players. Doing competitive games (WCs, continental qualifiers) first, will also help to determinate the strengths of players used in friendlies, especially whether to decide or not if a friendly should be non-FIFA or left out at all. On the other side, it is easier to get information about more present games like the late 1970s, than early 1960s. That effects especially qualifiers, from which we are not even sure about the year from some 1960s games. So, it may be better to wait until local historicans have worked out something more reliable than we have at the moment. As I don't want to get this post too long, I just start with what we have and what could be a target for the future:

    WORLD CUP
    to me THE competition for national teams. There is no other competition like this and clearly above the 6 continental competitions. That's why the last two years I uploaded also all the qualifiers from 1934 to 1978. What we now miss are the matches of the 1982 WCq played in 1980 from the smaller nations, who haven't been yet done by the year-by-year approach. I think we can be hopeful that until the start of the (centennary) 2030 World Cup qualifying these matches will be online to get finally complete World Cup records.
    Also I want to mention that I did put online the 1928 and 1924 Olympics as the World Cup predecessor, so we have all Olympics before the introduction of the "real" World Cup, even the two editions after 1923, the year NFT stucked with the historic data.

    Oceania Cup
    The youngest confederation. I put also here the 1973 final tournament online, so NFT is complete with the Oceanian Cup history.

    Asian Cup
    Something I worked on recently. The 1980 final tournament is nearly done, still waiting one or two more matches from the smallest countries not yet done by the 1980 year-by-year-approach. I took a bit more care about the past editions. For 1972 and 1976 I put online at least the final match, while the first 4 editions had no final match but round-robin groups. So, I put online the final tournaments from 1956 to 1968 as a whole. Noticing that for 1968 it even gets difficult to find match reports for the final tournament. For qualifiers it will be even trickier. Did the 1956 qualifiers with a few missing info'. I think a few qualifiers will get tough to get sources. So, I may will online work on qualifiers when reviewing a certain country. What may could be done are the 1972 and 1976 final tournaments (even if some match reports will be tricky too), so that at the start of the next final tournament in january we have at least the history of the final tournament. 1980 year-by-year approach should be succeed to have finish the 1980 edition as well until january.

    Euro
    Euro final tournaments as well as the first (1960) edition's entire qualifying had been in the NFT system since long. What I did recently, was to add all historic quarter-finals which had been part of the qualifying before 1980, and I also did the entire qualifying for the 1964 edition which was completely in a knock-out phase. Between 1968 and 1980 it had been played in a group stage which much more matches. 95% of the european squads are prepared. When doing 1964 I just had newly created players for Iceland. So besides having the match reports (which other sites have already as well) there won't be too much new info'. Maybe a task for beginners, should NFT get new people working on the database.

    Africa Cup
    to me the most interesting as I reviewed several african countries the last 3-4 years. I put online all the final tournaments during that time, and also worked much on qualifiers. Though sources are difficult here. And for many games we can be glad to even get scorers or the correct year in the match date. Maybe it's better to wait with the remaining qualifiers, or maybe I start a test project opening a thread we can discuss on the African Cup qualifiers. Or just set the matches. Experienced showed, it goes easier the more NFT have. That's why I did create tournament trees for all the editions these mentioned competitions were played. If we have the tournament, then it's easier to just create the matches, and if we have the matches it's easier to fill them up with match info'. So, let's see where this is going in Africa.

    Copa América
    the most historic competition, and the competition we miss most info'. We had a guy working a bit on Uruguay, but besides that all the tournaments from 1924 to 1979 are nearly empty. Match reports should be available easily, but squads are prepared differently. While we have Brazil prepared from 1930 and Argentina from 1935, Venezuela isn't prepared at all, so plenty of new players have to be created, which on the other site makes it interesting.
    I have taken a closer look on South America before getting the NFT database access, so, I won't take a look at that region again in the near future. While I labeled Euro data for beginner, filling up Copa América could be the advanced beginners class.

    Gold Cup
    is all online being newly formed. Interesting is its predecessor
    CONCACAF championship
    and before the merger into CONCACAF we had
    CCCF championship & NAFC championship
    though the North Americans just played a single edition.
    To me, that's an interesting region as besides the USA and most of Mexico not much is prepared. Something I noticed when doing historic WCq. On the other hand, good sources are starting to pop-up, which leads into having the match reports, at least for the final tournaments with many players to newly create. After setting the tournament years, it was a pleasure to see that the 1946 tournament has been already filled. At the end, it's a hobby for all of us, and everybody should work in the fields he is most interested in. With a few more people actually working on historic data we could progress a little bit faster. In the Euro, Copa América and CONCACAF/CCCF we have much space for improvement. Oceania Cup is done. While Africa Cup and Asian Cup will get interesting.

    • New

    It would be good to finish the Europian Championship,because there are only four tournaments left (1968-1980).There will be new players not only from Iceland ,but also from Cyprus.