Friday's Olympic Games predictions: Football clash for bronze is tough to call

Three things to watch out for in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on Friday.

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Japan v Mexico draw
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Four of the six knockout matches in the men's football finals have been all-square after 90 minutes and this promises to be every bit as tight

Team show jumping

11am Friday

Team GB's hopes of emulating the gold won by Ben Maher and Explosion W in the individual event suffered a blow when Scott Brash and Jefferson had to be withdrawn.

It was doubly gutting for Brash just hours after he had missed out on the jump-off for the medals in the individual event by half a second.

Harry Charles on Romeo 88 is promoted to the British team alongside Maher and Holly Smith, who rides Denver. The United States are the world champions, France the reigning Olympic champions and it's one round of qualifying with the top-ten teams going through to Saturday's final.

Women's hockey final

11am, Friday

The Dutch are all the rage to take care of Argentina and land women's hockey gold for the third time in the last four Olympics.

Their record of played seven, won seven, 26 goals scored and just three conceded, has put them head and shoulders above everyone else in the field.

Argentina's 3-0 win over Germany in the last eight hinted at what they are capable of, but it's desperately hard to see the 2-7 Dutch being overturned.

Early birds can see if Team GB can justify 1-4 favouritism against India in the bronze-medal match. That's a 2.30am start.

Men's football bronze-medal match

Midday Friday

It's Mexico versus Japan for bronze in a repeat of a Group A match which the tournament hosts won 2-1.

Since then, the Mexicans have smashed six past South Korea and held Brazil to a goalless draw, going out only in a shootout. Japan, meanwhile, have played four hours of knockout action and are yet to find the net.

The Japanese, marshalled by ex-Southampton centre-back Maya Yoshida, have conceded one goal inside 90 minutes in their five matches, and this looks like a classic attack-versus-defence contest which the layers are struggling to call.

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