[2] The top three eligible teams (not including England and Olympic hosts France) qualified.
However, an English team cannot participate in Olympic qualification for Great Britain due to there being no agreements between the associations of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
The winners and runners-up of each group advanced to a final single round-robin stage, with the top two teams qualifying for the Olympics.
Fifteen teams joined hosts Qatar to play in four groups of single-leg league format matches.
The match was won by Guinea, and thus Indonesia failed to enter the tournament for the first time since the 1956 Summer Olympics.