10:57 am
Friday 07 February 2020
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Dpa:
The Argentine national football team joined the caravan of the men who qualified for the men’s soccer competition in the upcoming Olympic Games (Tokyo 2020), after reserving the first qualification card from the South American qualifiers for the Olympic Games.
The Argentine team snatched the card to qualify with a 1/2 victory over its Colombian counterpart Thursday evening (Friday morning GMT) in the second round of the final stage activities in the tournament currently held in Colombia, which qualifies for the Olympics.
And the Argentine national team raised its score to six points from two successive wins at this stage to top the group, while the Colombian team’s balance was frozen at one point in the last fourth in the group.
And the Argentine team has become the thirteenth team to qualify for the football competition (men) in the Tokyo Olympics, where it was preceded by the teams of Japan, homeowners, France, Germany, Romania, Spain from Europe, New Zealand from the Oceania Federation, Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa from the African continent, Australia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea from Asia.
This leaves 3 seats, one from South America, and two for North America, to be decided at the beginning of next April.
With this, the Argentine national team will contest the Olympic competition for the second time in a row and the fifth in its history.
The team, which won the gold medal for the competition in both the 2004 Olympics in Athens and 2008 in Beijing and the silver medal in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, bid farewell to the competition from the first round (group stage) of the last Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.
The first half of the match ended in a goalless draw, then the Argentine team advanced with goals scored by Augustine Jose Orzi and Patricio Perez in the 50th and 53rd minutes, while Edwin Citri scored the goal of saving the face of the Colombian team from a penalty in the 67th minute.
The Brazilian team (samba dancers) escaped the trap of defeat in the other match in this round and snatched a 1/1 draw with Uruguay to maintain its chance to qualify for the Olympic title.
Uruguay advanced with a goal scored by Manuel Ugarte Ribeiro in the 35th minute, and the Brazilian national team tied through friendly fire, where Ignacio de Arubarena, the Uruguayan goalkeeper, accidentally scored in his team’s goal in the 40th minute.
Despite this draw, the Brazilian national team faces the risk of eliminating the qualifiers and dashed its hope to defend its Olympic title, which culminated in its gold for the first time in its history nearly four years ago when the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro hosted the Olympic events.
And the Brazilian team, whose group tops the first stage of the current qualifying tournament, is second in the group in the final stage with only two points from two consecutive draws, which means its need to win any result over its Argentine counterpart in the last third round of the group matches on Sunday to qualify to The Olympics regardless of the outcome of the other match in the group between Colombia and Uruguay.
Both Colombia and Uruguay have the opportunity to reserve the second and last card from these qualifiers to the Olympics by winning the match between them and the Brazilian team stumbled against its Argentine counterpart.
The lottery is scheduled for next April or May.
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