Football at the 1924 Summer Olympics
| Men's football at the Games of the VIII Olympiad
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| Venues | Stade Olympique, Stade Bergeyre, Stade Pershing, Stade de Paris | |||||||||
| Dates | May 25–June 9 | |||||||||
| Competitors | 279 from 22 nations | |||||||||
| Medalists | ||||||||||
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 Uruguay
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 Switzerland
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 Sweden
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At the 1924 Summer Olympics held in Paris, Uruguay dominated the football tournament winning the Gold.
In 1921, the Belgium Football Association first allowed for payments to players for time lost from work; in the months that followed four other Associations (Switzerland and Italy amongst them) permitted similar subsidies. The Football Association, perhaps, with foresight considered their statement of 1884 to be one which FIFA should hereafter follow. They had stated: "Any player registered with this Association ... receiving remuneration ... of any sort above ... necessary expenses actually paid, shall be considered to be a professional."
In 1923 the four British Associations sought an assurance that FIFA accept this definition; the four FIFA representatives on the International Football Association Board refused and, consequently, both the United Kingdom and Denmark withdrew their footballers from representing their nations at the 1924 Olympic Games.
In Association Football (1960), Bernard Joy wrote about the 1912 Games that the authorities in Sweden "had debated for a long time whether to include football ... because its popularity was not yet world wide". Twelve years later, in Paris, football had become so important to the Games that a 1/3 of the income generated came from football. In terms of international development these Games signalled the first participation in a major Championship of a team from South America, a continent which would provide the main competition to Europe from that moment on.
In Paris, Uruguay, who had paid their third class passage to Paris and gone on a dazzlingly successful tour of Spain beforehand, would join as many as 18 European teams; the United States, Turkey and Egypt. In terms of the numbers of participating teams this would be the biggest international football tournament until the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain.
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