Most of July has represented a busy intersection of soccer teams in the UAE trying to complete their teams and begin training … and the fasting month of Ramadan.

As soccer clubs here become increasingly media savvy, more formal opportunities to meet with clubs and players are staged, and this is the time when clubs are active in the transfer market and, even, in a few cases, hiring coaches.

That means press conferences.

They just don’t always come at what would be considered regular hours the other 11 months of the year.

To wit:

When the local league, now called the Arabian Gulf League, had an event to reveal the draw for the 2013-14 season, it began at 10:30 p.m.

Some recent press conferences put on by individual clubs have started at 9 and 9:30 — p.m.

These are events that, the rest of the year, would be staged at 11 a.m. or 1 p.m., generally.

The difference is, of course, Ramadan.

Observant Muslims do not eat or drink from dawn until dusk.

The meal that comes with the breaking of the fast, iftar, comes at about 7:15 p.m., this month.

What that means, in practice, is that most of the players and officials with the league are leading almost nocturnal existences. Eating at 7:30, practicing at 9 or 10 p.m., eating again before dawn and then sleeping a portion of the day.

The schedule also gets a shove towards the wee hours because of the heat of July. No club will run training programs during the day, even if it were not Ramadan. (And most of them will travel to camps in Europe, in the coming weeks, to find milder weather.)

So, the journalists covering these late-night conferences can ask for late deadlines and bank on quick pressers to write live for the newspaper. Or, or can take their time and come back and write it the next day.

We at The National have done it both ways — hurried or waited.

Late starts are applicable to friendlies matches the clubs set up. Al Jazira, for example, is hosting a four-team mini-tournament over the coming weekend, and the early match is at 10 p.m. and the late match is at midnight.

Ramadan ends about August 9. The clubs may continue to train at night, but the media events generally will move forward to times more typical for the rest of the year.

No earlier than 11 a.m., no later than 4 p.m.