Experts insist that the climate of Brazil is why the world has been treated to goals galore

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...flurry-of-goals-and-excitement-in-Brazil.html

I thought I would put this here since we have been discussing this topic in several match threads, FIFA have been ordered to have water breaks and FIFA themselves registered 38.8°C in the first half pitch side in the Holland v Mexico match. It is a good article. I have listed a few quotes from the expert below. It also links what is said below to facts like this World Cup having a record number of goals from substitutes and five teams losing their next game after playing in Manaus, etc.

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“Football performance is altered in hot and humid conditions,” according to Michael Davison, a football medicine specialist and managing director of Isokinetic, a Fifa medical centre of excellence in the UK.

“It manifests itself differently in players based on their position in the team, their fitness level, their hydration status and their level of ‘heat stress’.

"The South American and ‘hot country’ teams are dominating the World Cup so far and it makes you feel that they have matched their tactics to the environmental conditions along with their confidence to play in these otherwise uncomfortable conditions.”

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“The heat and humidity will deplete players’ levels of glycogen – the energy stored in muscles – which leads to loss in concentration or the ability for defenders to get to the right place at the right time, such as marking their opponent in the penalty area,” he says.

“The European players – other than the domestic-based Germans and French, who had three and six weeks of winter break – are suffering from a long season and a cumulative fatigue. Their ability to recover will be impaired.”

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“It would be interesting to understand if most of the substitutions across the tournaments have been strikers rather than defenders,” he says. “If so then clearly defenders have been more tired by the end of games and have made mistakes as much as fresher players having capitalised on them.”