page_title: Football at the 1924 Summer Olympics
section_title: Final tournament
hierarchical_section_title: Football at the 1924 Summer Olympics / Final tournament
caption_attribution_description: English: The Yugoslavia national football team that competed at the Summer Olympics held in Paris, France.
context_page_description: Football at the 1924 Summer Olympics was the sixth edition of the football tournament at the 1924 Summer Olympics held in Paris.
  The tournament expanded to 22 countries from 4 confederations, with African sides Egypt and Turkey, Uruguay representing South America and the United States in representation of North America.
  Uruguay made a memorable debut, winning the gold medal and finishing unbeaten.
context_section_description: The Games competition was assisted by a Preliminary Round which featured the silver-medallists from the 1920 Games, Spain in a game with Italy.  Since that time Spain had only lost once and that by a single goal away to Belgium and had drawn 0-0 with the Italians in March 1924. There was hardly anything between themselves and Italy when they met, this time, at the Colombes Stadium; Pedro Vallana's own goal handing victory to Italy.
  Hungary put five past Poland, the Swiss sent Lithuania on their way, 9-0.  The Uruguayans played first-rate football, combining speed, skill and perfect ball-control.  By marrying short passing to intelligent positional play, they made the ball do all the work, and so kept their opponents on the run wrote Joy.  The Uruguayans sailed past Yugoslavia by seven clear goals, then overcame the United States by three goals to nil.
  In the first round Czechoslovakia (following their decision to walk off the field in 1920) faced Switzerland and the game went into extra-time.   One Czech was sent off, and the Norwegian referee had to call for order during a break.  For the replay, Abegllen took the captain's duties and all was different; Switzerland winning by the single goal.  Otherwise there were two surprises, the first went Egypt's way; 3-0 to the good against Hungary.  The second saw Sweden defeat the reigning gold-medallists, Belgium 8-1.  Oscar Verbeeck's own goal set the Swedes on their way; Sven Rydell's hat-trick the feature of the match.  The Swedish outside-left Rudolf Kock (who would become chairman of the selectors in 1948 working alongside George Raynor), would have another fine game against Egypt where Sweden won 5-0.  France and Holland had been similarly dominant in the first round, but Uruguay beat France 5-1 to claim a semi-final place.
  In another quarter-final Italy went out to Switzerland disputing a winner by Max Abegglen, who converted a break-away goal.  The Italians protested that he had been off-side.  The referee Johannes Mutters, refused to alter the decision of his linesman; a jury upheld the judgement.  There was further dispute in the semi-final where Holland (coached by the former Blackburn Rovers' player William Townley) took a first half lead against Uruguay through Feyenoord's Kees Pijl.  With twenty minutes to go Pedro Cea scored an equaliser and with less than ten Georges Vallat, the French referee, awarded Uruguay a penalty.  FIFA reported that "the Netherlands protested the ruling of a penalty kick that turned out to be the winning goal but then Uruguay protested against the Olympic Committee's selection of a Dutch referee for the final. To appease the South Americans, the committee pulled the name of a final referee out of a hat and picked out a Frenchman, Marcel Slawick". In the other semi-final between Switzerland and Sweden the Swiss prevailed.
  In the final the Swiss were defeated by the Uruguayans whose two goals in the second half put paid to their opponent's ambitions, Uruguay eventually prevailing 3-0.  Interest in the final had been considerable, such was the draw of the Uruguayan side; 60,000 watched and 10,000 were locked out.
caption: The Yugoslavia side had a poor showing
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