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Hockey World Cup: Uninspired India go down to Argentina
India's hopes for a Hockey World Cup semi-final falter with a 3-5 loss to Argentina, highlighting defensive issues and ending their campaign in disappointment.
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Mumbai: At the beginning, there was hope. They needed to win by at least two goals. And there was a stirring pep talk by captain Harmanpreet Singh in the team huddle.
“We can do this!” The captain exclaimed again and again. But what started with promise and a war cry ended in a whimper.
At the Wagener Stadium in Amstelveen, with a potential spot in the Men’s Hockey World Cup semi-final on the line, India were outplayed and outfought in a 3-5 defeat to Argentina.
Deep Dive
With it, ended a campaign that had more moments of despair than praise. India had not won a World Cup title since their one and only triumph in 1975. The challenge to end that 51-year wait saw the world No.8 team fail to win any of the three matches against higher-ranked opponents – losing each match against No.4 England, No.1 Netherlands, and No.7 Argentina by a margin of two goals.
Alarmingly though, there were defensive frailties on display throughout the tournament. India conceded 16 goals across the five matches played so far (the consolation classification match will be played on Friday). Of those, 12 were field goals.
For comparison, India scored five field goals from their 14 in total.
On Monday, those defensive lapses came to the fore in as early as 39 seconds.
To get to the semi-final, India needed to win by at least two goals and hope the Dutch beat England in the match later in the evening. Yet, Argentina came off the blocks quickly. Tomas Domene carried the ball into the shooting circle from the right flank and played a square pass across the goal. The unmarked Joaquin Toscani, stationed near the far post, collected and slotted past HS Mohith in the Indian goal.
Five minutes later, another defensive mix-up saw Harmanpreet let go of a long pass into the box, only for Sumit to get caught with the ball by Nicolas della Torre in a moment of indecision for a penalty corner for Argentina. Della Torre himself stepped up to power it home to double the lead.
By the 10th minute, hope returned for the Indian cause after Sukhjeet Singh hammered a shot from close range on the swivel to pull one back, as India went into the half-time break trailing 1-2.
The end-to-end play from the first half continued after the restart, with Argentina once again making threatening forays towards the India goal. Los Leones didn’t have to wait long to find the back of the net. Lucas Toscani drove into the circle. A tackle took the ball away from him, only for it to fall invitingly to Domene, who slotted home first-time with a reverse hit.
Domene scored again in the last minute of the third quarter after yet another defensive howler.
Yashdeep Siwach attempted a low crossfield pass in his own half, but it was intercepted by an Argentine attacker. As the shot on target came in, the ball crashed into Siwach’s leg for a penalty stroke that Domene converted without much fuss for his eight goal of the tournament – the highest scorer for the competition so far.
Lucas Toscani then got onto the scoresheet in the 53rd minute after some clever link-up play with Martin Ferreiro to take the game well beyond India’s reach.
Leading by four goals though, Argentina’s intensity dropped in the final few minutes which allowed India to make a few late charges towards goal.
Sukhjeet got his second goal of the match after a clever deflection from a pass Mandeep Singh smashed into the circle. And then in the final minute of play, Hardik Singh converted a penalty stroke to reduce the deficit to two.
“For us, our defence was not so good,” Hardik said after the match. “We wanted to play the game normally and the goal would come. It just didn’t happen as we planned.”
With a top four slot out of contention, India will play their last match of the tournament against Belgium in the seventh place match on Friday.
Indeed, nothing quite went according to plan.
