Hockey: Pakistan's Olympic dreams shatter
Pakistan came into the game hopeful and optimistic. The Netherlands left them bruised and battered. A day after stunning the hosts with a 4-4 draw in the first leg of their Olympic qualifier, Pakistan came crashing down to earth as the Netherlands thrashed them 6-1 to seal a 10-5 aggregate victory and punch their tickets to Tokyo for next year's Games.
The Dutch were devastating, racing into a 4-0 lead at halftime with Mink van der Weerden scoring twice and Bjorn Kellerman and Mirco Pruijser both firing home glorious backhand efforts.
Terrance Pieters and Jip Janssen then scored in the space of four minutes in the third quarter to effectively end the contest altogether before Rizwan Ali's drag-flick conversion gave Pakistan a consolation goal seven minutes from time. "It is a bad day, we have missed out on the Olympics," said Pakistan's Rashid Mehmood, as the three-time Olympic champions missed out on reaching the Games for a second successive time.
"We couldn't make it [happen] in the second game. The Dutch team defended very well in the game today and we didn't start very well, we made a lot of mistakes. In the first half they took advantage of that. We couldn't match their pace in the first half." Kellerman has scored with a sensational backhand strike and he was at it again. Robbert Kemperman cut in from the right before finding Kellerman on the left, who smashed a stunning backhand strike into the bottom right corner from an ever-narrowing angle to give the Netherlands a ninth-minute lead.
Van der Weerden, who scored twice including the lastgasp leveller for the Dutch, doubled their advantage in the 17th, firing in a penalty stroke after after a rapid attack was cynically cut short by the Pakistani defence. It was 3-0 five minutes later with Pruijser breaking into the circle and finishing clinically before Van der Weerden's powerful drag-flick all but extinguished Pakistan's hopes in the 28th.
"I think the tempo we played today was a lot better, and I think that made the difference," said Van der Weerden. "Our tempo on the ball was a lot better, there was a lot more energy and that is a big difference.