THUSDAY JULY 26th

THURSDAY JULY 26th

I am an early bird today. Next email will be at the standard time of 10.00 on Friday and will include Irish Premier, French Ligue 2 ( although a cautious approach through the first week or two) and Olympic Football.

The weekend will look like this....

SATURDAY : Two emails

The first at 09.00 UK time will include the morning J-League action and Olympic news.

The follow up at 11.00 will cover the overnight games from the MLS.

SUNDAY : Two emails

The first at 09.00 will look at Olympic Football and a full round of Brazilian games.

The second at 11.00 will cover the final round of the USPGA Tour event and the remaining football action.

Last week I wrote the following ....

I think the most important news today is that Ramadan starts, so Muslims will be refraining from eating and drinking from dawn until sunset for the next 30 days. In the UK, that is pretty much 05.00 until 21.00 at this time of year

and is tough for anyone, let alone a sportsman or woman.

I touched upon this last year, Demba Ba of Newcastle United was especially affected through the early part of the season and none of his 16 goals came before September 24th. The Magpies might struggle early this season with Papiss Cisse, Hatem Ben Arfa and Cheick Tiote also, all being practicing Muslims.

Sportsmen and especially footballers are creatures of habit used to eating at set times before training and playing, we have talked previously about how any disruption to this schedule can have an effect on performance and this is major, they also take on huge amounts of fluids and are not even allowed to drink water during Ramadan.

I feel a little bad about using someone's religious beliefs to our advantage, but it is what it is and I think that we can especially use this information to give us an edge at the Olympics and through the early weeks of the domestic football season(s).

Today, this fasting should have some bearing on the Men's Olympic Football games, how much, is open to debate.

Let's start with the GB- Senegal fixture. Around 94% of the Senegalese population are Muslim, so we can assume that almost all of their squad are, I know for a fact that two of the original three over age players are ,Mohamed Diame and Dame N'Doye, the latter said recently  “I manage Ramadan like any other (day), I eat from 10pm until 2am, and the rest of the time I don’t. It’s just a question of organising your day, and I’ve been doing it as long as I can remember, so it is not a problem for me.”  I think it is a little harder this year for the players as the religious observance has fallen at a time when most are also doing pre season training, which is very physically draining. Also, the days are long in July and as N'Doye says, his window for eating and taking on fluids is very small, just four hours and at a time when most professional sportsmen should be sleeping, especially before a match, then the food has to be digested. It is a massive disruption to a footballers schedule and must have an impact and this year, because of the timing of Ramadan, during pre season and very long days, the effect should be greater. Also, the 20.00 kick off time of this fixture has done the fasting players few favours as they will not have eaten, or taken on fluids for 20 hours ! 

N'Doye has had to withdraw from the squad, which robs them of their most (only) experienced striker and came very late in the day. GB are favoured by playing at Old Trafford, the home stadium for Giggs and Cleverley and the city where Richards lives and plays and several others have earned their livings, the match is a sell out and this is a huge opportunity for Team GB to really kick start the whole Olympics. Coach Stuart Pearce made an error in the recent friendly against Brazil, where they were outclassed, setting up his defence to handle the threat of one guy was wrong, he will surely have learned from that and has had five training sessions since then to sort things out at the back. GB improved as the game wore on against Brazil, who admittedly stepped down a pace, but the British squad had just a couple of weeks together before that game and should strip fitter and better in sync this evening. They should win, but -0.75 ball 1.95 is a little on the skinny side, if it is possible to find another "ten clicks" to that quote, either pre match or early in running, I will probably get involved, as all the advantages seem to be with the hosts.

It is a similar story with the UAE-Uruguay match which is the curtain raiser at Old Trafford. The Uruguay frontline in particular with Luis Suarez, Edinson Cavani and Abel Hernandez has a real touch of class and they have already scored seven goals between them in two warm up matches this month. Not sure what sort of reception the Liverpool player Suarez will get at OT, probably not good ( terrible ?), but he is the kind to feed off that. The trio of strikers already have 42 goals for the full national team between them and even Hulk, Pato and Neymar for Brazil don't come close to half that tally between them. That gives you some idea of the quality that their Muslim opponents ,who are appearing at the Olympics for the first time have to face, however, defensively, Uruguay looked very vunerable against Chile recently and they appear short enough, asked to give up 1.75 goals on the asian line. Having said that many/ most/all of the UAE team will not have eaten for approaching 20 hours by the end of this game and could tire badly against a clearly potent attacking force.  The UAE had an impressive qualifying campaign going unbeaten through ten matches and winning through a group containing Australia ( who had qualified for the previous six Olympics), Iraq and Uzbekistan.

Last of the matches to discuss is Honduras- Morocco. Morocco have made it to the Olympic's on six occasions but their record of 3-3-14 is very poor, they quaified for the tournament by finishing runner up in the CAF U-23 Championship, but were perhaps lucky to do so, as the event was originally scheduled for Egypt, but moved to Morocco over security issues. Honduras has little previous history, two appearances and one win, they battled trough a tough CONCACAF qualifying competition, beating El Salvador who had put out the USA (who were hosting the competition) in a group decider, in the semis and then taking Mexico into extra time in the final. They have one UK based player Maynor Figueroa of Wigan Athletic, who is famous as being the only professional footballer in the world without ten toes ! Actually he only has eight !

There is quite a bit of full national team experience in this squad, especially through the three overage players Figueroa, Bengtson and Espinoza, but well over half have made a handul of appearances. The squad have already been in Europe for several weeks and won all three warm up games, beating Gabon, UAE and Egypt, the last of these in France was said to have been a particularly impressive performance, against what is a similar opponent to the one they will face today. They were very well organised and extremely comfortable on the ball, controlling the tempo of the game from the outset, a french newspaper ( the match was played in Amiens )said that they were "utterly dominant" and should have won by far more than the 1-0 scoreline, being denied by the woodwork and some wasteful finishing. The Egyptians are young but experienced at this level and have played a huge number of matches this year, probably the most of any U23 team, so this was an impressive showing for the Hondurans and taking into account that and the Ramadan effect on the Moroccan players, although the early ( 12.00) kick off time negates that a little, I cannot really understand why Morocco have been made such big favourites. 1.25 units Honduras +0.25 ball 1.97 looks the way to go.

I am sorry, but the Europa League matches do nothing for me at this stage of the season and I am happy to let them pass.

BRAZIL: SERIE A

Atletico Mineiro won’t be able to call upon defensive midfielder Leandro Donizete and they have a 100% record in the six matches he has started this season. Otherwise they are pretty much at full strength,

As we have discussed a couple of times recently, Santos are struggling for numbers and are low on offensive quality at the moment. I wrote about them on saturday  we opposed Santos in midweek, taking Botafogo with the handicap start , I wrote .....Hosts are without star player Neymar, Paulo Henrique Ganso  and Rafael , all on Olympic duty, Juan is suspended, Bernardo, Fucile, Leo, Edu Dracena and Galhardo are all injured. So, they are missing five starters including three defensive players and keeper from an already suspect backline, plus a couple of likely replacements and their two big names in Neymar and Ganso.  Santos held out for a 0-0 draw, which was pretty good under the circumstances, they will have Juan back from suspension, but that shaky backline will again be missing several players and the big three are going to be in London for several weeks yet. It will definitely not be so easy for Santos to hold out on the road, especially at strong home side Vasco da Gama, who have won four of their five home starts and who could go top of Serie A with three points this evening.

They lost 2-0 at Vasco and now face another very difficult away start to the league leaders, the big 3 are still at the Olympics of course,  the defence is without three players again including the suspended Durval ( 21 Serie ! and Copa starts) and Edu Dracena ( 18 starts). No goals in three starts for the visitors and it is hard to see that improving, with much of their offensive talent in London. Hosts have won six in a row and scored 13 in their last four, average league position of those six when they played AM was 9th, which makes the sequence even more impressive.Ronaldinho has made a big contribution to each of those wins, with three goals and four assists, after a very slow start to his season and he and his team mates will surely fancy this against a Santos side low on confidence and missing both starting central defenders.They collected just a single point from the three league games both missed this season and that came against 19th placed Bahia. However, it will be hard for us to get too fat on the odds offered about the hosts ( -1 ball 1.82), having said that the visitors make no appeal at present. I would like to say that it might be an option to wait a while and back the hosts "in running", but Santos have conceded an awful lot of early goals ( over 26% of their total allowed) in the first 15 minutes, more than in any other 15 minute period in their game(s), which is very odd, average time for a first goal scored in Brazilian football is 32nd minutes, so these stats are way out of line .

Good Luck.