Tokyo 2020 Olympics football update: The first match has completed with surprising results

Football at the Summer Olympics

Performances by countries

Football at Tokyo 2020 Olympics

Group A

The U23 Mexican football team has successfully surpassed U23 France by a 4-1 win in the first match of Tokyo 2020. Mexico and France, who both won a gold medal of football in the history of the Olympic Games, in 2012 and 1984 respectively, have had an intense match on 22 July 2021 in their group game without spectators. Both didn’t score in the first half, and then thanks to Alexis Vega and Francisco Cordova, Mexico's side surpassed with two goals ahead. French player Andre-Pierre Gignac saved a goal for his team with a penalty after that. Uriel Antuna and Erick Aguirre kept netting in the last minutes of the match, increasing the final result to 4-1 to Mexico. 

Mexico beat France by 4-1 in Tokyo 2020

On the other side, Japan, as the host country of the 2020 Olympics, first had some trouble surpassing their opponent, the South African football team. Japanese players try to reach their best result this year, after a long time their highest finish was the 1968 Olympics with a bronze medal. Magic happened in the 71st minute when young Real Madrid player Takefusa Kubo scored the only goal in this game for Japan.

Group B

New Zealand and Romania advanced by becoming the winners of the matches against South Korea and Honduras respectively. New Zealand, with a humble achievement in the football Olympics, has amazingly beaten South Korea by 1-0. The Burnley striker Chris Wood has brought the only goal for New Zealand in the 70th minute.

In the other game of Group B, Elvin Oliva from Romania scored one goal and helped his team win over Honduras. In the past, Honduras once reached the semi-finals of the 2016 football Olympics and finished fourth, while Romania never made a winning return during 57 years. So this might be a surprising result for Honduras. 

Group C

In Group C, there was a draw between Spain and Egypt in their first football match of Tokyo 2020. Spain have obtained a total of three medals in the history of football at the Olympics, one goal and two silver, while the Egyptian team only reached their highest place as fourth two times in the 1928 and 1964 Olympics. So it is fair to say that Spain has a better opportunity to win this match. However, Spain witnessed the loss of two players to injury in their squad, and this goalless draw was really a disappointment for them.

Meanwhile, Australia surpassed Messi’s football country by a 2-0 win. Lachlan Wales scored the first goal of the match in the first half, followed by the second by substitute Marco Tilio in the last 10 minutes. It seems that the dream to “shock the world” of Australia’s head coach Graham Arnold is on the way to come true. 

Group D

This group featured two giants of football in the Olympic Games, Brazil, which is the current champion and the team with the most total medals, and Germany. Brazil have shown the world that they might have a chance to retain their gold medal this year by a persuasive win 4-2 over Germany. These two teams faced each other in the final match in Rio 2016 and the host team beat Germany by a 5-4 penalty win. They remade history with a great result this year and Everton forward Richarlison successfully completed his hat-trick and boosted his team’s goals to four in total. 

Richarlison

The other match between Ivory Coast and Saudi Arabia ended up with a 2-1 win for Ivory Coast. 

References

Wikipedia

Espn

Betimate.com