As if there wasn’t enough doubts about rotation and opening day fantasy premier league line ups without the Olympics further complicating things but have no fear we at fantasyfootballgeek have tried to give you all the fantasy premier league implication
Firstly lets start with some facts:
Tournament duration:
26 July – 11 August
The competition consists of 16 teams in 4 groups of 4. the top 2 teams go through to the quarter finals and then semis and final. A maximum number of 6 games then in 26 days.
GB’s group games are against Senegal on the 26th July, UAE on the 29th of July and Uraguay on the 1st of August.
I understand they report for training on the 7th of July.
The fantasy premier league players who will participate
First of all here are the teams that qualified:
Great Britain, South Korea, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Gabon, Morocco, Egypt, Mexico, Honduras, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, Belarus, Senegal.
Here are the fantasy premier league players(hopefully this is complete, information is difficult to gather in is entirety, you’ll be surprised to hear:
TEAM GB (entire 18 man squad)
Joe Allen ( Swansea City )
Craig Bellamy ( Liverpool)
Ryan Bertrand ( Chelsea)
Jack Butland ( Birmingham City)
Steven Caulker ( Tottenham Hotspur)
Tom Cleverley ( Manchester United)
Jack Cork ( Southampton)
Craig Dawson ( West Bromwich Albion)
Ryan Giggs (Manchester United)
Aaron Ramsey ( Arsenal)
Micah Richards ( Manchester City)
Danny Rose ( Tottenham Hotspur)
Scott Sinclair ( Swansea City )
Marvin Sordell ( Bolton Wanderers)
Jason Steele ( Middlesbrough )
Daniel Sturridge (Chelsea )
Neil Taylor ( Swansea City )
James Tomkins ( West Ham United )
Other fantasy premier league players
Oriel Romeu (Spain and Chelsea)
Ryan Bertrand (Spain and Chelsea)
Juan Mata (Spain and Chelsea)
David Luiz (Brazil and Chelsea)
David De Gea (Spain and Manchester United)
Johann Djourou (Switzerland and Arsenal)
Chu-Young Park (Korea and Arsenal)
Kasami (Fulham and Switzerland)
Bruno Uvini ( Tottenham and Brazil)
Sandro (Tottenham and Brazil)
Siegrist – (Aston Villa
Hulk – (Porto (and maybe Chelsea) and Brazil)
Ryan Nelsen (QPR and NZ)
Chris Wood (WBA and NZ)
Figueroa – (Wigan and Honduras)
Luis Suarez (Liverpool and Uraguay)
Sebastian Coates (Liverpool and Uraguay)
A managers view
Heres some quotes from De Matteo in the Independent
“As a manager, you would like to have them with you in pre-season, but it is the Olympic Games and players will want to be involved with it,” he said.
“It is a great opportunity for the players to be involved in the Olympic team, one that the players do not want to lose out on.
“It is not ideal, but there will be many clubs in the same situation as us.”
Di Matteo added: “Pre-season is very important for the players to put the foundation in for the season.
“It is a bit disrupted by the European Championship and the Olympics, and it will be towards the end of July or the beginning of August before we have the whole squad together.
“In that sense it is a little bit disrupted, but we will certainly be working hard during pre-season.”
Mata made his only appearance for Spain in the final of Euro 2012, and Di Matteo admitted the player would have to be carefully managed when he does finally integrate back with the Chelsea squad.
He said: “We will have to see with Mata, because he was at the Euro champs as well
“It depends when then go out of the competition and how he feels physically and mentally.”
De Matteo added: “There is always this dilemma in the national teams.
“There is a friendly in August as well for some, but we will have to work around it.”
These are fairly negative words about participation in opening day lineups.
The fantasy premier league effects
Most fantasy premier league players will be easing there way back into preseason slowly and methodically. They will work their way up to match fitness through low intensity games against carefully chosen opposition. They will learn again how to play with their team mates and reacquaint themselves with team tactics and systems. They will spend time and bond with their fantasy premier league team mates.
This is a contrast to the Olympic players who will be intensively training for high pressure games against physical and motivated opponents and will then turn up potentially a week before the season starts, even less for those like 2 Swansea players who will play an international friendly after that. That’s even before you take into account injury risk.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the lack of a very scientific and methodical preseason will not only harm their opening fantasy premier league day selection prospects it will also cause them a far greater risk of their game time being “managed” ie rotated/rested due to this disrupted preseason.
We will have to monitor events as they go along but opening day selection of my fantasy premier league team will probably have no players in this group above
sources: BBC sport, The Independent, Wales online, Wikipedia
