By Harpal Singh Bedi
Ace midfielder and captain Manpreet Singh on Wednesday exuded confidence that India will put up winning performance against Germany in Olympics men hockey bronze medal play-offs on Thursday .
“I think we should just forget about what happened in the Semi Final and just put all our focus and energy into the game against Germany. The team has the experience of playing them in recent times. We are ready for the challenge,” said the Indian captain.
We have the entire country’s support. We even had the Prime Minister call us and wish us after the Semi Final loss. He asked us to not feel disappointed and just look forward to playing well on Thursday and that’s what we plan to do. We are pumped up for the game.” he opined
Meanwhile, introspecting on the semifinal match against Belgium coach Graham Reid, was of the view that his lost for not converting opportunities early in the game.
“At 2-1, we created a lot of opportunities, and really we should have converted. We couldn’t get that scoreboard pressure to go to 3-1. When it was 2-2 also, we had the opportunity to go 3-2. The number of opportunities at that time, we didn’t get that scoreboard pressure back on Belgium.
There were a few periods of play when we lost the ball and they scored, and we spiraled a little bit after that. I think we paid the prize of not getting that scoreboard pressure back onto them when we could have,” rued Reid.
However, he said optimistic that team will make amends to their game rmany in the Bronze Medal match against Germany.
“As far as Germany is concerned, players are keen to make amends for yesterday (Tuesday), they are aware the Bronze medal is up for grabs. Mentally we are in the right space, and we will be working harder. We will be making sure all our Ts are crossed for the games against Germany.”
. In their tour to Europe in February this year, Indian team played Germany in two back-to-back matches and in the first match they beat Germany 6-1 and in the drew the second match 1-1.
Germany, on the other hand, went on to play the Final of the EuroHockey Nations Championships in June this year. They drew 2-2 in regulation time against the Netherlands and lost 1-4 in the penalty stroke.
In this Olympics , Germany registered four wins the Group Stage (7-1 against Canada, 5-1 against GB, 4-3 against South Africa and 3-1 against the Netherlands) and lost 1-3 to Belgium. In the Quarter Final they beat defending Olympic Champions Argentina 3-1 and lost 1-3 to Australia in the Semi Final.
Whereas India finished top 2 in Pool A with four wins (3-2 against New Zealand, 3-0 against Spain, 3-1 against Argentina, 5-3 against Japan).
They suffered one loss to Australia. In the Quarter Final, India beat Great Britain 3-1 and lost 2-5 to Belgium in the Semi Final.