Harpal Singh Bedi/ Bhubaneswar
An elated Indian coach Harendra Singh after his team made it to the quarter finals on Saturday said “A four-nation tournament has finished. The World Cup starts now.”
He praised his players for producing an awesome display to close the league assignments saying “Actual tournament starts with the next game.
Talking to media persons after the match against Canada, the coach however said “ Our target was 6-0, we won 5-1. Yes I feel bad about that Clean-sheet nahi hua,” . By conceding you give away the momentum to opponents. The clean sheet puts pressure on the (future) opponents when they see the team has not conceded a goal”.
Further elaborating the coach said “ This team plays according to plan and target ,the days of its and buts are gone” he said adding
“. We have to do our homework. I have seen the time when we used to talk about ifs and buts. We have a target and we know if we achieve that we will reach where we want to. We have been working on that concept for the last 4-5 years”.
He said he was not worried when the Canadian equalized because I have confidence in my players “ We had to wait for our moment, Just can’t keep rushing towards the ball every time”.
Talking about the game in general, the coach said “I think in the first half, we did too much running. In the final executions also we showed too much of a hurry. I that this childish instinct players have to throw out. That is what we spoke at halftime. I told them that they are running for the ball. I wanted the players to challenge the rivals in every position .
Asked why he changed the goal keeper at the late stage (Sreejesh removed the pads and had come up) he replied that “ This team has the strength, we can change any Player any time. I should have done (removed GK) 3 minutes ago. It was decided that in the 8th minute we will remove, but we missed that somehow. Irrespective of the result, we had decided we will take out the keeper (shortly before the end).
Asked about penalty corner conversion by Amit Rohidas, the Coach replied “There are 18 Rohidas in this team. I don’t talk about individual players. “
He informed that Manpreet was having cough and sore throat. “We could not use him for the entire match. So we had one less midfielder. That’s why Lalit’s role changed. I pulled Lalit back a little.”
Canadian coach Paul Bundy opined We lost focus. Once we were 2-1 down, guys were tyring to do more than it was needed. Both teams were a little nervous. Obviously India were looking to top the pool.
After the third or 4th goal went in, (we turned to damage control). We need to give credit where it’s due. India put the foot on the accelerator and punished us.
HSB