In the technical report following the competition, FIFA reported that: "Compared with the 1979 World Youth Tournament in Japan and the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina, the standard of football at the Olympic Football Tournament was generally of an inferior quality".[2]
Due to the American-led boycott, countries (in brackets) who qualified did not enter the final
tournament. Spain sent a team under the IOC flag. The following 16 teams qualified for the 1980 Olympics football tournament:
The final was played in a hard rain for the third straight Olympics. Both teams played with ten players after the 58th minute after one player from each team was red-carded.
With five goals, Sergey Andreyev of Soviet Union was the top scorer of the tournament. In total, 82 goals were scored by 52 different players, with only one of them credited as own goal.