Seven qualified countries did not participate, joining the American-led boycott in protest of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

[1] Sixteen teams were divided into four groups: 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".

The football tournament was the most attended event on these Olympics: 1,821,624 spectators watched 32 matches of it at the stadiums.

Due to the American-led boycott, countries (in brackets) who qualified did not enter the final tournament.

Stanislav Seman Luděk Macela Josef Mazura Libor Radimec Zdeněk Rygel Petr Němec Ladislav Vízek Jan Berger Jindřich Svoboda Lubomír Pokluda Werner Lička Rostislav Václavíček Jaroslav Netolička Oldřich Rott Zdeněk Šreiner František Štambacher František Kunzo Bodo Rudwaleit Artur Ullrich Lothar Hause Frank Uhlig Frank Baum Rüdiger Schnuphase Frank Terletzki Wolfgang Steinbach Jürgen Bähringer Werner Peter Dieter Kühn Norbert Trieloff Matthias Müller Matthias Liebers Bernd Jakubowski Wolf-Rüdiger Netz Rinat Dasaev Tengiz Sulakvelidze Alexandre Chivadze Vagiz Khidiyatullin Oleg Romantsev Sergey Shavlo Sergey Andreev Vladimir Bessonov Yuri Gavrilov Fyodor Cherenkov Valeri Gazzaev Vladimir Pilguj Sergej Baltacha Sergei Nikulin Khoren Hovhannisyan Alexandr Prokopenko Revaz Chelebadze With five goals, Sergey Andreyev of Soviet Union was the top scorer of the tournament.