Junior Hockey World Cup: Belgium next for beleaguered greenshirts

Junior team coach ‘hopes’ players will bounce back after German thrashing.

Pakistan junior hockey team’s coach Anjum Saeed is hopeful that his team will make a strong comeback after a 6-1 thrashing at the hands of Germany on Saturday in a Group A tie of the Junior World Cup taking place in New Delhi.

The greenshirts were no match for the defending champions, who were in control of the match from the outset; a hat-trick by Christopher Ruhr enabled the Europeans to steamroll Pakistan.

Saeed feels that the main reason behind the poor show was losing Muhammad Arsalan to a red card foul in the first half of the match.

“Arsalan’s red card was a huge dampener for our plans,” Saeed told The Express Tribune. “We were left to play with 10 players for 50 minutes of the match.”



Saeed was also unhappy with the pool that Pakistan had been allocated. He claims that the organisers changed the groups at the last minute and grouped the greenshirts with European title contenders Belgium and Germany.

“We will try our best to beat Belgium in our next match, but the fact remains that the two pools are not equally matched. At the same time the players made a lot of mistakes against Germany, which resulted in the 6-1 drubbing.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2013.

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