Football at the Olympics: France loses embarrassingly, Argentina and Germany are also without points

The men’s soccer tournament began at the Olympics on Thursday. The first round of the group stage offered a few surprises, with the French, Spanish and Germans losing points.

Mexico’s match against France went exactly the other way than expected. The Mexicans scored two goals quickly after half-time, added two more just before the end and crushed the French with a strong and expensive squad 4:1.

In Group A, Japan managed to beat South Africa 1:0. On Sunday, France must defeat the African team, otherwise they can forget about qualification.

Group B, which is clearly the weakest, was quite poor in goals. New Zealand defeated South Korea 1:0 with a goal from Chris Wood, a teammate of Matej Vydra from Burnley. In the afternoon, Romania (also 1: 0) took on Honduras and their chances for promotion look promising.

Two surprises were also offered in Group C. Strong Spain played goalless against Egypt, in the afternoon Argentina fell 0:2 to Australia. The fact that they played the entire second half with ten players had an impact.

In the morning match of Group D, as expected, Côte d’Ivoire beat Saudi Arabia 2:1, and in the afternoon’s showpiece match between Brazil and Germany, it looked like revenge for the 2014 World Cup semi-final after half-time, but Germany did not give up and reduced the score to 2:3 with two goals in the second half. However, they did not manage to score any more, and on the contrary, they scored once more in the setup, thus not taking even a point from the first match.

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