Football at the 2012 Summer Olympics Football at the 2012 Summer Olympics The association football tournament at the 2012 Summer Olympics was held from 25 July to 11 August, and was the only sport to begin before the official opening day of the Olympic Games, two days before the opening ceremony. It was also the only sport to be held at multiple venues outside London (the host city of the Olympics), with Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Coventry and Cardiff all hosting matches. The finals were played at Wembley Stadium. Associations affiliated with FIFA were invited to send their senior women's and men's under-23 national teams to participate;
Football at the Summer Olympics football tournament. In an extreme example, two early-round venues for the 1984 Games were on the East Coast of the United States, well over from the host city of Los Angeles. The next Games held in the United States, the 1996 Games, were unique in that no matches were held in the host city of Atlanta; the nearest venue and the site of the finals was away on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Counting the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, there are 121 venues that have hosted Olympic football, the most of any sport. For both the men's