Although the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games has not yet begun, the competitions of some events have been staged in advance. The men's group stage that fans are concerned about, the first round of matches are all over, Japan and Iraq from Asia, respectively, defeated their opponents and ranked first in the group, while Argentina encountered great controversy and finally lost and temporarily ranked bottom.
The Olympics are for the Under-23 age group, but each team can have three overage players, like Argentina defender Otamendi, who once played for Manchester City, is over 36 years old and seems a bit out of place to compete with a group of young people.
Since only 16 teams participate in the Olympics, in addition to the host France, Europe, Asia and Africa, with 3 places each, South America and North America have 2 places each, Oceania has 1, and the last one is produced by the fourth place from Africa and Asia in a play-off. Guinea from Africa defeated Indonesia from Asia to qualify for the play-offs, so there are a total of 4 teams in the African zone.
Obviously, compared with the World Cup, this distribution is relatively even, and the stronger European and American teams have only 5 seats in total, and there are obviously too few participating teams. Especially in South America, there are only 2 seats, resulting in two consecutive Olympic champions Brazil actually unable to qualify, and the defending champion is out early, which is also extremely rare.
At the same time, the lack of strong teams has also given Asian teams more opportunities to play, and in the last Olympics, Japan reached the semi-finals, and in the London Olympics, Korea and Japan both reached the semi-finals, and their performances were quite good. The quota in the Asian zone is determined by the U23 Asian Cup, but unfortunately, the national football team is in the same group as Japan and South Korea in the group stage, and cannot qualify, so it will not qualify for the Olympic Games.
On the first day of the Games, six of the eight matches were decided, with favourites France and Spain both winning and Oceania's New Zealand getting off to a flying start. Japan and Iraq in Asia were a surprise, taking all three points in the opening game and greatly increasing their chances of qualifying.
Japan, in particular, beat Paraguay by five goals, which was quite a surprise. You know, Paraguay beat Argentina in the South American qualifiers and qualified first, and let the two-time champion Brazil miss the Olympics. The rise of Japan has made fans even more embarrassed, three months ago, the national youth team still lost to Japan by one goal while playing one more person, which is a key node in the Olympic Games, when will the national football team appear in the World Series?
The other winner was Argentina against Morocco, a rather interesting game, with Morocco's Rahimi scoring twice to take a two-goal lead before Argentina stubbornly recovered one. In this game, for various reasons, the stoppage time was as long as 15 minutes, and in the 106th minute, Argentina finally scored again and seemed to equalize.
Fans joked that Argentina did not score and the referee would not blow the final whistle. Therefore, the goal was scored in the 16th minute of stoppage time, causing the Morocco fans watching the game on the sidelines to be quite dissatisfied, causing riots and even throwing firecrackers into the stadium. Both teams had to stop the game and go back to the locker room to take refuge.
At this point, drama happened, and after a two-hour break in the game, the referee determined that the Argentina goal was invalid based on VAR replays. The two teams finished the final three minutes of the game with an empty stadium (all the fans had already left), and Argentina lost 2-1 to Morocco and temporarily finished bottom of the group.
This competition is also the biggest controversy of this Olympic Games so far. Argentina equalised in super-long stoppage time, disallowed the goal two hours later, and the two teams played three minutes of play, a fairly rare story in football history. The Olympic Organizing Committee issued four announcements in a row, and finally confirmed the score, and celebrities, including Messi, were quite dissatisfied with this result.
In fact, the referee was watching the VAR replay when the game was interrupted, which was reasonable from a rule point of view. However, during the two-hour hiatus, the Olympic Organizing Committee did not make a clear statement, nor did it say that the referee was checking whether the goal was valid. As a viewer, it is natural that there is no way to hear anything. Therefore, after the game resumed, the story of the "reversal" was suddenly received, which caused an uproar.
Although Argentina lost, as long as the remaining games can be won, qualification will not be too much of a problem. It is really a shameful thing that the Olympic Games have not even started, causing an uproar, and I hope that in the next competitions, it can be more open, transparent, fair and effective, which is in line with the purpose of the Olympic Games.