2004 CONCACAF Women's Pre-Olympic Tournament explained

The 2004 CONCACAF Women's Pre-Olympic Tournament was the first edition of the CONCACAF Women's Pre-Olympic Tournament, the quadrennial international football tournament organised by CONCACAF to determine which women's national teams from the North, Central American and Caribbean region qualify for the Olympic football tournament. The tournament was held in Costa Rica from 25 February to 5 March 2004.^[1]

The tournament was originally scheduled to be held in Mexico from 2 to 12 February 2004, but was later moved to Costa Rica.^[2]

The top two teams qualified for the 2004 Summer Olympics women's football tournament in Greece as the CONCACAF representatives. The United States won the final 3–2 against Mexico, with both teams qualifying for the Olympics.

Qualification

Canada, Costa Rica and the United States automatically qualified for the final tournament. The remaining five berths were allocated to the five group winners of the qualification tournament.

Qualified teams

The following eight teams qualified for the final tournament. Mexico, the original hosts of the tournament, originally qualified automatically.^[3] However, after the tournament venue was changed, new hosts Costa Rica instead qualified automatically, while Mexico took Costa Rica's place in the qualifying competition.

Team	Zone	Method of qualification	Previous Olympics
	NAFU	Automatic	0
	UNCAF	Automatic (host)	0
	CFU	Group 3 winner	0
	CFU	Group 2 winner	0
	NAFU	Group 4 winner	0
	UNCAF	Group 5 runner-up	0
	CFU	Group 1 winner	0
	NAFU	Automatic	2

Venues

The matches were held at the Estadio Nacional, San José and the Estadio Eladio Rosabal Cordero, Heredia.

	San José	Heredia
	Estadio Nacional	Estadio Eladio Rosabal Cordero
	Capacity: 25,000	Capacity: 8,700

Squads

See main article: 2004 CONCACAF Women's Pre-Olympic Tournament squads.

Group stage

The top two teams from each group advanced to the semi-finals.

All times are local, CST (UTC−6).^[4]

Tiebreakers

The ranking of teams in the group stage was determined as follows:^[5]

1. Points obtained in all group matches (three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a defeat);
2. Goal difference in all group matches;
3. Number of goals scored in all group matches;
4. Points obtained in the matches played between the teams in question;
5. Goal difference in the matches played between the teams in question;
6. Number of goals scored in the matches played between the teams in question;
7. Play-off on neutral ground.

Group A

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Group B

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Knockout stage

Bracket

Semi-finals

The semi-final winners qualified for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

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Final

Best XI

The following players were included in CONCACAF's "Best XI" of the tournament.^[6]

Goalkeeper	Defenders	Midfielders	Forwards
Karina LeBlanc	Sharolta Nonen Gabriela Trujillo Joy Fawcett	Cindy Rodríguez Mónica Vergara Shannon Boxx Aly Wagner	Shirley Cruz Maribel Domínguez Abby Wambach
Honourable Mentions
Briana Scurry	Xiomara Briceño	Diana Matheson Alicia Wilson Patricia Pérez	Aysha Jamani Christine Sinclair

Qualified teams for Summer Olympics

The following two teams from CONCACAF qualified for the 2004 Summer Olympic women's football tournament.

Team	Qualified on	data-sort-type="number"	Previous appearances in Summer Olympics1
		0 (debut)
		2 (1996, 2000)

¹ Bold indicates champions for that year. Italic indicates hosts for that year.

Notes and References

1. Web site: CONCACAF 2004 Women's Pre-Olympic Tournament Technical Report . . 23 January 2021 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20121102193514/http://www.concacaf.com/staticFiles/31/44/0,,12813~148529,00.pdf . 2 November 2012.
2. Olympic dates set . CONCACAF News . . 2 . 13 . 2 . March 2003 . 24 January 2021 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20040409145436/http://www.concacaf.com/graphics/newsletters/pdf/March2003/march2003.pdf . 9 April 2004.
3. Web site: Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament 2004 . . 28 May 2003 . 24 January 2021 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20031005092438/http://www.concacaf.com/view_article.asp?lang=en&id=1423 . 5 October 2003.
4. Web site: 2004 CONCACAF Women Olympic Final Round Qualifying Schedule . . 21 January 2004 . 23 January 2021 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20040411022324/http://www.concacaf.com/view_article.asp?id=2406 . 11 April 2004.
5. Web site: Zürich . Regulations of the Olympic Football Tournaments: Games of the XXVIIIth Olympiad Athens . . April 2004 . 23 January 2021 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20040823215102/http://fifa.com/documents/tournaments/olympic/Olympia_e.pdf . 23 August 2004.
6. Web site: CONCACAF unveils 2004 Pre-Olympic All-Tournament Team . . 4 March 2004 . 23 January 2021 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20040531011532/http://www.concacaf.com/view_article.asp?id=2456 . 31 May 2004.