‘Impressed with consistency our boys showed in the tournament’

BHUBANESWAR: It wasn’t just the fans here that were impressed by a depleted Germany’s fighting performance in the third place playoff against the hosts. India coach Sjoerd Marijne too lavished praise on the South Americans even though they came out second best, losing 2-1.

“It was a great performance from Germany, and the goalkeeper was superb under the bar. They fought really hard,” said Marijne.

“The players were a little bit scared to lose the ball. I am happy with the win, because matches like these are not easy. Because it all (11 vs 18) plays in the head. The most important thing is mentality with which we won the match. Of course, we can improve.”

“The most important thing in this tournament was consistency. That’s the thing we need to work on. We played at the highest level. Now I know what happens mentally, now we can take steps, what we need to change,” he said before adding, “We will take our time for that. We have to learn our lessons. The easier thing is to see what we didn’t do well. I know that. But if you create chances, it means you did something good.”

Marijne added that for him it’s always about the team, not the individuals. “We want to score 100 goals. There are seven young guys who played at the highest level against top teams. The guys train hard to improve on penalty corners (PC).”

Team’s drag-flick expert Harmanpreet Singh, however, appreciated the efforts the side had put in to win the bronze medal. “We can’t play hockey without practice, so we practice everything, including penalty corners. If you don’t make a mistake, you won’t learn. It’s good to make mistakes. It’s also important to learn lessons in defeat.”

Captain Manpreet Singh sounded relieved. “We just wanted to win the match. We went all out to apply pressure. We got the ball a lot. We didn’t want to dwell on the number of their players. We just wanted to score off our chances.”