India hockey coach Paul van Ass expresses disappointment over loss to Malaysia
Indian hockey coach Paul van Ass has expressed displeasure over India’s second consecutive loss, this time to Malaysia at the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup on Wednesday. The Sardar Singh-led side went down 3-2 to the hosts, with the old ghosts of conceding goals in the dying moments of the game, coming back to haunt them.
The defeat now means that the team is now out of contention for a berth in Sunday’s final.
“No, I am not happy with the performance. I am especially not happy with the way we started.”
“Our performance in the first two quarters was very poor. Our scoring rate is very low. We had a lot of field chances today. Against New Zealand as well there were a lot of chances. If you put them in the problem is solved but there is something wrong which we have to analyze and solve," van Ass told reporters after the game.
“I was happy with the performance against Korea. That was a matured game. I was relatively happy with the performance against New Zealand. We gave away that game in the end. But today we gave it away again. That's the story which we have to solve," he added.
Can't afford to lose momentum while going for goal: van Ass
Talking about the late goal, the Dutchman said that in trying to be attacking, the team lost control and felt it wasn't a good sign, going forward.
"Towards the end we pushed for the third goal. The mindset was to try and score the third goal. But there we lost little bit of control and this can happens which is not good," the 54-year-old said.
Don’t keep your Olympic hopes too high: van Ass to Indian fans
The former Netherlands coach also cautioned the team’s supporters against keeping any high expectations from the team at the Rio Olympics next year.
“Everyone in India is expecting a medal from us in Rio. We are number nine in the world and you can see the reason why we are number nine in the world. My personal plan is to have a good camp in the summer time where we can work on several aspects.
"Then we have Hockey World League 3 where we should pick up some good results. For me the real test will be the Hockey World League Final in December where we will compete against the best eight of the world. That will give us a measurement as whether we have real chance in Rio," he said.
"Everybody expect us to beat Canada (tomorrow) but I am not convinced. We have to take it from where we left it. Every game is important because every game gives me information to work on the areas and at the moment that is far more important than the result," he concluded.