{"id":10249,"date":"2012-04-25T04:30:10","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T02:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/04\/update-2-olympics-soccer-britain-to-face-senegal-in-first-game\/"},"modified":"2012-04-25T04:30:10","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T02:30:10","slug":"update-2-olympics-soccer-britain-to-face-senegal-in-first-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/update-2-olympics-soccer-britain-to-face-senegal-in-first-game\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE 2-Olympics-Soccer-Britain to face Senegal in first game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>(Adds details, quotes)<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Mike Collett<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>LONDON, April 24 &#8211; Hosts Britain, taking part in their first<br \/>\nOlympic soccer finals since 1960, will kick off their bid for<br \/>\ngold against Senegal at  Old Trafford after being placed in a<br \/>\ntough opening round group in the draw at Wembley on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Senegal, who play Britain on July 26, reached their first<br \/>\nOlympics after beating Oman 2-0 in a playoff on Monday and the<br \/>\ngroup will be completed by Uruguay and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Like Britain, who won the soccer gold in 1908 and 1912,<br \/>\nUruguay also boast two Olympic titles from 1924 and 1928, and<br \/>\nthey are returning to the Games after a long absence, in their<br \/>\ncase 84 years since they won the tournament in Antwerp.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I saw them play at the Under-20 World Cup and they were<br \/>\nvery impressive,&#8221; Britain coach Stuart Pearce told a news<br \/>\nconference.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Pearce has a list of 80 probables for his Olympic squad from<br \/>\nEngland, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and can call on<br \/>\nleading players from the Premier League.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Luis Suarez of Liverpool could be included in the Uruguay<br \/>\nsquad and Newcastle United strikers Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse<br \/>\nwould add considerable firepower to the Senegal team.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is such an honour to play against Britain in the opening<br \/>\nmatch at Old Trafford,&#8221; Augustin Senghor, the president of the<br \/>\nSenegalese FA, told Reuters.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Adds details, quotes) By Mike Collett LONDON, April 24 &#8211; Hosts Britain, taking part in their first Olympic soccer finals since 1960, will kick off their bid for gold against Senegal at Old Trafford after being placed in a tough opening round group in the draw at Wembley on Tuesday. Senegal, who play Britain on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-10249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}