ANALYSE THIS: Australia overtakes Great Britain in Virtual Medal Table

GENERAL – Australia has moved into fourth position in the Infostrada Sports’ Virtual Medal Table (VMT) after the inclusion of athletics and swimming personal bests since May 2015 took projected golds away from Germany and Great Britain and added four medals to Australia’s forecast total.

REVIEW: France win their first European Volleyball title

VOLLEYBALL – France defeated Slovenia in the final of the men’s 2015 European Championship on Sunday. For Slovenia it was their first final in an Olympic team sport since 2004 (World or continental championship), when they lost the men’s handball title against Germany at the European Championship.

ANALYSE THIS: Parity like never before in swimming

SWIMMING – With only one day of competition left at the 2015 Swimming World Championships in Kazan, the United States have reclaimed their leading position in the Market Share (metric that weights all ranks) table, but only by a very small margin. Like we reported earlier this week, their position is being challenged by traditional rivals Australia, China and France, but also the strong emerging force that is Great Britain. For comparison, the US had a market share of nearly 50% only eight years ago, now that has been reduced to 20%.

ANALYSE THIS: USA, Germany, Japan & Canada expected in last four

FOOTBALL – The FIFA World rankings for women’s football have provided a good basis for our forecast so far with seven of our eight favourites in the second round progressing through to the quarter-finals. In addition, our pre-tournament forecast correctly predicted six of the eight quarter-finalists, and two of the exact match-ups (France v Germany and England v Canada) in this round. Our updated forecast for the quarter-final matches expects the United States to play Germany and Japan to play Canada in the last four. These exact semi-final pairings were also predicted in our pre-tournament forecast.

ANALYSE THIS: Germany slight favourites at FIFA Women’s World Cup

FOOTBALL – Germany are the favourites for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, but only just, according to a new analysis from Infostrada Sports. The United States are second favourites and there is nearly 50% chance of the winners being one or the other of these two teams. They are, however, most likely to meet each other at the semi-final stage of the competition.

PREVIEW: France main provider to African Cup of Nations

FOOTBALL –  From the 368 squad members in the 16 teams that will contest the 2015 African Cup of Nations, 73 ply their domestic trade in France and 54 of them play for a French top flight club.

French all-time top scorer Thierry Henry retires

FOOTBALL – Thierry Henry has retired on 16 December 2014. France’s all-time top scorer Paris became an international superstar and played for AS Monaco, Juventus, Arsenal, Barcelona and New York Red Bulls. read more here.

ANALYSE THIS: Data Report – World Cup 2014

FOOTBALL – Throughout the second phase of the World Cup, we brought you Data Reports before selected matches. With the competition over, here are the winners of a number of team categories. All of these statistics are contained in our Round-up document which is also available throughout domestic league seasons.

ANALYSE THIS: Wave – France v Germany

FOOTBALL – France produced the majority of the offensive production in the match from the 30th minute to the 80th as they went in search of the equaliser. After this, Germany took the initiative before the final France attempt just before the end.

ANALYSE THIS: Data Report – France v Germany

FOOTBALL – Each matchday during this World Cup, we will publish data reports on the teams playing in the fixtures that day, highlighting the most important characteristics of those teams from the World Cup data that we have been collecting since the World Cup began on June 12. Firstly, today, the match between France and Germany.