This newsitem has been supplied by PSV.nl
The Netherlands' Olympic coach Foppe de Haan has named four PSV players in his provisional 36-man squad: Otman Bakkal, Dirk Marcellis, Ismail Aissati and Nordin Amrabat. The squad will eventually be cut to eighteen players for the Beijing Olympics. De Haan will announce his final squad on Wednesday 23 July.
Hongkong and Tianjin
On Friday July 11, Foppe de Haan will name a 22-man squad who will report for training in Oisterwijk nine days later. The Dutch Olympic team will meet their Belgium counterparts for a friendly in Genk on Wednesday 23 July, with an 8.30pm kick off. The final eighteen-man squad and four standby players will be announced on that same day. Three days later, on 26 July, the Olympic team will head for Hongkong, where they play two international pre-Olympic friendlies. The team will travel to Tianjin on Sunday August 3, where they play their first two group stage matches. The Netherlands are drawn alongside Nigeria, Japan and the United States in Group B. They face Nigeria on August 7 and meet the United States of America three days later. The Netherlands will play Japan in Shenyang on August 10 in their final group stage match.
Final scheduled for 23 August
The quarter-finals take place on August 16 and the semi-finals will be staged on August 19. The bronze medal match will be played on August 22 while the final is staged one day later. So the PSV players may be in action until August 23, when PSV and Feyenoord will kick off the 2008/09 campaign in the traditional Johan Cruijff Shield curtain-raiser. Otman Bakkal, Dirk Marcellis, Ismail Aissati and Nordin Amrabat will report for duty with the Olympic team on July 8 when they do a test to assess the individual fitness. The PSV first-team squad will report back for pre-season training on July 14.
