Football qualification system latest to be revealed on the road to Paris 2024

As we approach the start of the qualification period for Paris 2024, Football has become the latest sport to announce its qualification procedures for the Games.

Football

Football has a Men's 16-team tournament and a Women's 12-team tournament (no change from 2020): each team is a squad of eighteen players. Qualification is on a continental basis. One spot will be going to hosts France, with the other fifteen spots to continental qualification events (dates and locations TBC). Three spots will be earned for Asia, Africa and Europe, two for "North, Central America & the Caribbean" and South America, and one for Oceania. The final spot will be earned at a play-off between a team from Asia and Africa. While most events have not been detailed, the North/Central America and Caribbean competition will be the 2022 CONCACAF Under-20 Championship (Various locations, 18 June-3 July). Men's Football is unique as it is an underage competition, with a stipulation that fifteen of the eighteen players in the final squad be born in 2001 or later. What this means is a spot has been taken from Europe (although as the hosts are European there will still be four European teams) and given to the new Afro-Asian play-off. The North America (et al) region had a specific qualifying event in 2020, but no longer.

On the women's side, which does not have age restrictions, there is a 12-team tournament. One place is given to the hosts France, with two spots for every continent apart from Oceania, that gets just one in continental qualification events (dates and locations TBC). Like the Men's tournament, only the details of the North/Central America and Caribbean region's tournament has been announced: the 2022 CONCACAF Women's Championship (Various locations, 4-18 July 2022). Compared to 2020, this removes a place from Europe (although once again there will still be three European teams as the hosts are European) and removes the Afro-South American play-off, instead giving two spots to both teams. In the CONCACAF Championship, the top team will qualify automatically, while the runners-up will play third place in a September 2023 CONCACAF Women's Olympic Play-in Series (dates and locations TBC).

This document seems somewhat hastily assembled being released just a day before the start of the 2022 CONCACAF Under-20 Championship. It means that that competition is the first to begin that directly gives quotas (not counting ranking events or pre-qualification events). This latest update also means that only four sports still have to release information: Aquatics, Athletics, and Table Tennis have not released any documents, while Cycling has only released the procedure for its Mountain bike discipline and we are still awaiting the release on other systems.

Patrick Green

Writer, Totallympics News