Players born on or after 1 January 2001 are eligible to compete in the tournament. Each team could register a maximum of 23 and a minimum of 19 players, including at least 3 goalkeepers (Regulations Articles 45 and 48).[3]
Venues
On 11 July 2022, CONMEBOL President Alejandro Domínguez announced that Venezuela would host the next CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament.[1][5] Venezuela is hosting the tournament for the first time, becoming the ninth CONMEBOL nation to do so.[6] On 14 October 2023, CONMEBOL announced Caracas, Valencia and Barquisimeto as the host cities.[2] On 28 January 2024, Barquisimeto was withdrawn as host city because the playing field of the Estadio Metropolitano was not fit to host the games it had scheduled.[7]
Estadio Brígido Iriarte in Caracas and Estadio Misael Delgado in Valencia will host the preliminary stage matches. The final stage matches, originally scheduled to be held at Estadio Metropolitano in Barquisimeto, were moved to Estadio Brígido Iriarte in Caracas.[8]
The draw was held on 20 October 2023 at the CONMEBOL headquarters in Luque, Paraguay. Hosts Venezuela and defending champions Argentina were seeded into Group A and Group B, respectively, and assigned to position 1 in their group. The remaining eight teams were placed into four "pairing pots" based on their final ranking in the 2020 CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament (shown in brackets).[9]
From each pot, the first team drawn was placed into Group A and the second team drawn was placed into Group B. In both groups, teams from pot 1 were allocated in position 2, teams from pot 2 in position 3, teams from pot 3 in position 4 and teams from pot 4 in position 5.[10]
The top two teams of each group advance to the final stage.
All match times are in VET (UTC−4), as listed by CONMEBOL.[13]
Tiebreakers
In the preliminary stage, the teams were ranked according to points earned (three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a defeat). If tied on points, tiebreakers would be applied in the following order (Regulations Article 20):[3]
Head-to-head result between tied teams;
Points in head-to-head matches among the tied teams;
Goal difference in head-to-head matches among the tied teams;
Goals scored in head-to-head matches among the tied teams;
The ranking of teams in the final stage is determined using the same criteria as the first stage, taking into account only matches in the final stage, with the exception of red and yellow card counts which carry over from the first stage (Regulations Article 21).[3]
All match times are in VET (UTC−4), as listed by CONMEBOL.[14][15]
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