What really went wrong for the Indian Men's team at Rio
As the Rio hockey fever has come to an end ..There were plenty of talks in the town subsequently after the Indian teams 8th position at the men's hockey tournament..Read out what really went wrong for the Indian team..
To read out the answer loud , the team din't do anything much out of the line to earn a 8th place finish.But since there was no classification match for the 5th to 8th position in this years tournament.The team was forced to settle down for the 8th place.
What really went wrong for the Indian Men's team at Rio
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| Photo courtesy - Hockey India |
The Indian team was clearly foreseen with a podium finish at Rio as they had won the Bronze at HWL Final 2015 and as well as the Champions Trophy 2016 Silver medal .After these two medals at the global arena the team was put in with so much of expectations.Considering the statistics we din't have the edge over the Belgian team in the recent past although the Indian team was still ranked higher than the Belgian team before the Rio Olympics.The team had played their hearts out except for the quarter-finals.The Indian team did have a confident start in the Olympics thumping up a close victory against the Irish team.Despite the fact that they dominated the Irish team in the first 3 quarters the Indian team pushed themselves in the back seat in the 4th quarter.Against the German's earning a draw would really had been an encouraging sign and could have boosted the teams confidence.Even after the last second defeat against the German's the Indian team trusted in themselves and earned a hard fought victory against the Olympic champions "Argentina".Even the loss against the Netherlands was a close call.The Indian hockey fans had all their faith for a podium finish but the draw against the lowly ranked Canadians was surely not acceptable.
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| Photo Courtesy - Hockey India |
So what really went wrong ?
From an Indian spectators point of view , the team themselves had created so much pressure especially in the last quarter in each of the games.Also the team starts to become defensive once they have a goal advantage which is not the one tactic the coach would really encourage.
If the team had applied the same pressure which they were creating in the first three quarters the result would have changed in each of the matches they had played.Especially the draw against the Canadian team impacted the Indian teams Olympic medal dream.If the team had won the match against Canada , they could have faced the Spanish team .FYI,the Indian men's team indeed had won against the Spanish team in the warm up game by 2 goals to 1.So the team could have had an opportunity to fit in for the medal games.Also the expectation which they had set has mounted their pressure so much.
But from a Hockey critics point of view, the team is in a growing phase and we could see in their performances in each of the games expect that of the quarter-finals.Since we have seen quality performances of the Indian team against the Belgian side we can never accept with the negative approach into the game even after scoring an early lead.To add on here a fact the average age of the Indian men's team is 24.5.Although its easy to sit and write critics about the teams performances only if we enter the turf with the mixed emotions as a player who is having an entire nations hopes we would really know the exact reason.But to bring in here an answer...
