Olympic Oranje’s program

Give them bread and games, wasn’t that what some Roman emperor said? The people will be docile and stay quiet as long as we feed them and entertain them… Well, we just had some entertaining weeks of European top football and we’re preparing ourselves for the Olympics now!

I must confess: I love the Olympics. Suddenly I find myself watching sports and going ape shit over athletes I’ve never seen before. Rowing. Synchronization swimming. Cycling. Darts. Well…not darts, ok… But still… And with football on the program, and the Dutch Olympic team being poised to snatch the Gold, ah… another series of weeks with hardly any sleep! My family is looking forward to it.

I will be posting some stuff on the Olympic team in the next weeks, so we can all get very enthusiastic about it once the Olympics start.

This is our program:

7 august 17.00 in Tianjin: Japan - USA
7 august 19.45 in Tianjin: Holland - Nigeria
10 august 17.00 in Tianjin: Nigeria - Japan
10 august 19.45 in Tianjin: USA - Holland
13 august 17.00 in Shenyang: Holland - Japan
13 august 17.00 in Beijing: Nigeria - USA

Foppe de Haan: “We don’t know our opponents that well, but we do know Japan is very disciplined and agile. The USA is physically and mentally strong and Nigeria is a dark horse. We know they’ve performed very well at earlier Olympics. They’re athletic, motivated and skilled. It’s going to be tough but at least we avoid Argentina and Brazil at this stage. I do expect us to finish in the top and I expect us to proceed. When we finish second in the group, we’ll probably have to face Argentina, but at these tournaments, anything is possible.”

Australia is in the one group with Serbia, Ivory Coast and Argentina, almost the same group as Holland had in the WC2006. Brazil is in group C with Belgium, China and New Zealand, what seems to be a walk in the park. Group D consists of Honduras, Italy, South Korea and Cameroon.

The times mentioned could be local Dutch times, or local Chinese times. I don’t know yet…

The ING Cup in Hong Kong is the warm up for the OS. Oranje will play Cameroon on July 30 and Ivory Coast on August 2nd. The USA will also be present at the ING Cup, but since ranje and the USA will verse eachother at the OS, both teams won’t play against each other in Hong Kong.

On July 23, before they travel eastward, De Haan’s team plays a friendly against the Belgium Olympic team in Genk (B).