Football at the 1936 Summer Olympics
| Men's football at the Games of the XI Olympiad
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| Venues |
Berlin Poststadion Berlin Mommsenstadion Berlin Hertha-BSC Platz |
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| Dates | Aug 3-15 | |||||||||
| Competitors | from 16 nations | |||||||||
| Medalists | ||||||||||
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 Italy
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 Austria
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 Norway
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Football at the 1936 Summer Olympics tournament, won by Italy, has come to share an affinity with the political backdrop against which it was being played. In terms of the history of association football, however, the tournament suffered as a reaction to the development of the FIFA World Cup.
The introduction of the first FIFA World Cup in 1930 (which had, in itself lead to the absence of a football tournament from the 1932 Games programme) led to a devaluation in the strength of each subsequent Olympic football tournament. Competing nations would from now on only be permitted to play their best players if those players were amateur or (where national associations were assisted by interested states to traverse such a rule) where professional players were state-sponsored.
The reinstatement of Olympic football was ensured in 1936 because the German organisers were confident that such a competition would be justified by the income it would generate. The fear that any failure by the host side would result in a loss of income had been a matter of contention despite the fact that going into the competition Germany were one of the favourites (They had only lost at home once in three years). In the event, the early failure of the national side did nothing to deter the supporters, as the bronze and gold medal games were watched by a combined total of 195,000 people.
The competition began in dramatic circumstances. The Italians, winners against the Austrians at the 1934 World Cup now found the Olympic side, with ten changes, a completely different proposition. The Azzurri included players such as Alfredo Foni, Pietro Rava and Ugo Locatelli, who would all play in their World Cup victory in Paris. That they eventually prevailed was due to two incidents: the first when their bespectacled forward Frossi scored, the second when Weingartner, the German referee, was literally restrained from sending off Archille Piccini after fouling two Americans. Italian players held both his arms and covered his mouth in protest. Piccini stayed on the park, Italy won.
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Wikipedia