The women's

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

tournament at the

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes fro ...

was held in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

and four other cities in the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

from 6 to 21 August. Associations affiliated with

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

were invited to send their full women's national teams. For these Games, the women competed in a 12-team tournament. Preliminary matches commenced on 6 August, two days before the

Opening Ceremony An opening ceremony, grand opening, or ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the official opening of a newly constructed location or the start of an event.

of the Games. The teams were grouped into three pools of four teams each for a round-robin preliminary round. The top two teams in each pool, as well as the best two third-place finishing teams, advanced to an eight-team single-elimination bracket. The tournament was won by the

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, which beat

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

1–0 in the gold medal game.

Carli Lloyd Carli Anne Hollins (; born July 16, 1982) is an American former professional Association football, soccer player. She is a two-time Olympic Games, Olympic gold medalist (2008 and 2012), two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion (2015 and 2019) ...

scored the game-winning goal in the 96th minute for the

, which collected their third Olympic gold medal.

Qualifying

National Olympic Committee A National Olympic Committee (NOC) is a national constituent of the worldwide Olympic movement. Subject to the controls of the International Olympic Committee, NOCs are responsible for organizing their people's participation in the Olympic Games ...

may enter one women's team for the football competition. * Note – The three best ranked European teams at the FIFA Women's World Cup qualified for the Olympics. However, the third best team England could not participate, because England competes at the Olympic Games as part of Great Britain, which does not compete in football. Therefore, the fourth European team would advance, requiring a play-off between

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

and

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

Venues

The tournament was held in five venues across five cities:

Seeding

Squads

The women's tournament is a full international tournament with no restrictions on age. Each nation must submit a squad of 18 players by 23 July 2008. A minimum of two goalkeepers (plus one optional alternate goalkeeper) must be included in the squad.

Match officials

Group stage

Group winners and runners-up, plus two best third place teams advanced to quarter final round. Groups are lettered sequentially from the last letter in the Men's Football tournament (which has Groups A through D). All times are

China Standard Time The time in China follows a single standard UTC offset, time offset of UTC+08:00, where Beijing is located, even though the country spans five geographical time zones. It is the largest sovereign nation in the world that officially observes only ...

( UTC+8)

Group E

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Group F

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Group G

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Ranking of third-placed teams

Knockout stage

Quarter-finals

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Semi-finals

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Bronze medal match

Gold medal match

Statistics

Goalscorers

Assists

FIFA Fair Play Award

China PR won the ''FIFA Fair Play Award'', given to the team with the best record of fair play during the tournament. Every match in the final competition is taken into account but only teams that reach the second stage of the competition are eligible for the ''Fair Play Award''.

Tournament ranking

References

External links

Olympic Football Tournaments Beijing 2008 - Women
FIFA.com

* * *
FIFA Technical Report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Football At The 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's Tournament

2008 2008 was designated as: *International Year of Languages *International Year of Planet Earth *International Year of the Potato *International Year of Sanitation The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...

Oly Women's events at the 2008 Summer Olympics