Qualified women football teams for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics

News from Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, Women first two matches results:

Rio 2016 Summer Olympics women football, Sweden Women Football team beat South Africa by 1 goal to nil in a group E match played at the Rio Maracana Stadium. In another group E match Brazil thrashed China by 3 goals to nil in Maracana.

At Sao Paulo's Arena Corithian, Germany beat Zimbabwe by 6 goals to one and Canada beat Australia by 2 goals to nil in Group F matches.

In group G matches played at the Belo Horizante's Mineirão Stadium, Rio 2016 Summer Olympics USA Women football team beat New Zealand by 2 goals to nil, while France beat Colombia by 4 goals to nil.

Women football as well as Men football sports will feature in the coming Rio 2016 Summer Olympics sports and events. as for the women there are 9 teams which have already qualified for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. The expected number of teams in this edition of the games is twelve and therefore there 3 more teams which are yet to qualify. The USA and Canada women football teams are the latest qualified nations for the coming summer Olympics games. The remaining slot for the 2016 Rio Olympics women football are one team from Europe and two teams from Asia and the winner of these remaining slot will be known by mid this month. We have seen the Summer Olympics USA women football team in action and we wish them all the best to maintain their winning streak in the Rio 2016 women football because they have been the best team so far.

Women football tournament was first played in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics held in the USA and the host women football team managed to win the Gold medal in these inaugural games for women football at the Olympics. This is after beating China women team for the 1996 Summer Olympics in the football sport by two goals to one. This final match was played at the Sanford Stadium located in Athens; this Athens in Georgia and is not capital of Greece. Sanford Stadium is part of the University of Georgia in Atlanta, USA.

Below is the Panoramic view of Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia, from the Upper North Deck.This the First Stadium on Earth to have ever held a Summer Olympics Final Women Football match. A match where USA Women Football team became the first ever women team to have ever won a gold medal in a Summer Olympics football sport

Source: This picture is from the Wikipedia

Unlike Summer Olympics men football qualification where they are age restricted to only 3 players above the age of 23 years, women football teams do not have such restriction to qualify for a spot in any of the Summer Olympics games. The qualification process is straight forward where participating women teams are selected from build-up championship when the Olympics nears.

This scenario however is not applied to the EUFA; European women football teams. In the Europe case, the selected teams are the most successful teams in the previous FIFA Women World Cup.

USA is the most successful women football team has won 4 golds in the previous edition of Summer Olympics; they are followed by Norway who beat them in the Sydney Summer Olympics, settling for a silver medal instead.

Below is a picture for a parade in Lower Manhattan in honour of United States women's national soccer team winning the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup

This picture is courtesy of Wikipedia

In the Summer Olympics Women Football Sport, the six different confederations representing different continents and geographical regions are allocated their slots.

For example in the coming Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, Africa or CAF has been allocated two slots, Asia or AFC, Caribbean’s, Central and North America confederation; CONCACAF has two slots too and so is South America’s COMEBOL despite the fact that Brazil is the host, which means only one slot have allocated to South America. Europe’s UEFA, for whatever reasons has three slots, I have never known why they are favored, a friend told me maybe Europe get that extra slot because FIFA has its headquarters in their continent, but those are politics for another day.

Finally Oceania’s OFC which represent Australia, New Zealand among other nations has only one slot.

Already 7 teams from CAF, COMEBOL, EUFA and OFC have qualified for the Rio Summer Olympics. Five more teams from CONCACAF (two teams), AFC (two teams) and one more team from UEFA will be qualifying between 21st of February and 9th of March.

We are looking forward to the USA splendid performance like they have always done. Zimbabwe is making its debut in this Summer Olympics; we hope they get past the knockout stage. Africa is yet to make an impact in the Summer Olympics women football tournament; we hope both South Africa and Zimbabwe will change this.

Below is a table of the qualified teams plus details on how the remaining three will qualify.

Confederation	Qualified Nation	Qualifying Year	Qualifying Date	Qualifying Championship	Venue
AFC	To be Determined	2016	29th Feb to 9th March	AFC Olympic Qualifying Tournament	Japan
AFC	To be Determined	2016	29th Feb to 9th March	AFC Olympic Qualifying Tournament	Japan
CAF	Zimbabwe	2015	2nd to 18th October	Olympic Qualifying Tournament	Home and Away
CAF	South Africa	2015	2nd to 18th October	Olympic Qualifying Tournament	Home and Away
COMEBOL	Colombia	2014	11th to 28 September	Copa America	Ecuador
COMEBOL	Host Brazil	2009	2nd October	When they became the host	Denmark
CONCACAF	USA	2016	10th to 21st February	Olympic Qualifying Championship	USA
CONCACAF	Canada	2016	10th to 21st February	Olympic Qualifying Championship	USA
UEFA	France	2015	6th Juneto 5th July	2015 FIFA World Cup	Canada
UEFA	Germany	2015	6th Juneto 5th July	2015 FIFA World Cup	Canada
UEFA	To be Determined	2016	2nd to 9th March	Olympic Qualifying Tournament	Netherlands
OFC	New Zealand	2016	23rd January	Olympic Qualifying Tournament	Papua New Guinea