The Soviet Union Olympic football team was the national Olympic football team of the Soviet Union from 1952 to 1992. The team participated in all of the qualification football tournaments for Summer Olympics (except for 1980 when it qualified as hosts). Until 1992, when age restrictions were officially introduced, the Soviet Union used the first team both in qualification tournaments and finals except for 1960 and 1964 when the second national team was used for the qualification tournaments (the first team succeeded it in the finals in those years).
History
Officially the Olympic national team was founded in 1959 after the FIFA adopted its decision in 1958 prohibiting players who played in the World Cup finals from participation in the Olympics. The Soviet Union did not participate in the World Cup until 1958 (see 1958 World Cup (qualifications)); instead, it used its first team (base team) to compete at the Olympics (since 1952) as it deemed that tournament more important. The USSR continued to use its best players in the Olympics after 1958 despite the FIFA ruling, with the branding "Olympic team" being rather formal, with all the players being part of the national team and competing both at the World Cup and Olympics.
In order to defend their Olympic title at the Rome Games, the Soviet Union national team had to go through a "selection sieve". According to the territorial principle, the team got into the third European group, along with the teams of Bulgaria and Romania. This time it was decided to create an Olympic team separate from the main one, which included players from the nearest reserve of the main team. Of the players who took part in the qualifying games, only goalkeeper Boris Razinsky represented the team that won the Melbourne gold. Boris Arkadiev was appointed as the head coach. The coaching council also included M. I. Yakushin and A. S. Ponomarev.
The calendar of games was drawn up in such a way that the Soviet Union national team took part in all the first four games, and the national teams of Bulgaria and Romania had to fight each other in the last two.
According to the results of the draw, the USSR national team got into the third European group of the qualifying tournament for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. The country was represented by the Olympic team, but in reality, the second team: the players of the first team (Glotov, Korneev, Mudrik) played together with the players of the nearest (Anichkin, Lobanovsky, Urushadze) and deep (Biba, Sevidov, Fadeev) reserve of the main team. There were no age restrictions for the players; for example, the goalkeeper Kotrikadze at the time of the first meeting with the Finns was 27 years old. The team was headed by Vyacheslav Solovyov, who combined this post with a similar job at CSKA. Assistant - E. I. Lyadin.
The tournament regulations did not provide for a group round-robin tournament. The teams had to play two-legged knockout matches. In the preliminary round, the East Germany Olympic football team knocked out the team of another Germany – West (payback for the last qualification). At the next stage, they had to challenge the Dutch, and the Soviet Union Olympic team challenged their access to the next round in the play-off with Finland.
According to the rules of the tournament, the teams had to play the third decisive game on a neutral field. The arena for the match picked was the Warsaw Stadium of the Decade.
