Indian Men’s Hockey team were playing the Olympic qualifiers in Santiago, Chile and the 8 time gold medalist missed out on the Olympics games Men's hockey event for the first time when it lost 2-0 to Great Britain in the finals of qualifying tournament on 9th March 2008.
Anyone who saw the match will come to conclusion that British team was more inspiring then the Indian team. The English team never allowed the Indian team to find any angels to score a goal.
India will be missing the Olympics for the first time and it will be hard truth to digest. Since 1928 India appeared 18 successive Olympics and this will be the first time India will miss the Hockey event in coming Being Olympics. This kind of result was expected from Indian Hockey Team and experts were expecting this from very longtime.
The blame game will start very soon and in my opinion the failure is collective from administration, government, players, coaches, and of course the media, whose hunger to prove the negative aspects of team from very long time and this has demoralised the team.
Coming to match, Briton was gold medalist in 1988 and scored two early goals to seal India’s fate. India was never allowed score or dominates the match. Barry Middleton scored the first goal in the 4th minute and Richard Mantell scored the second goal in the 10th minute. After the early goals by the Great Britian team, India never recovered from early disaster. Other teams in the tournament are the host, Austria, Russia and Mexico.
Coach Joaquim Carvalho resigned as coach of Indian team & IHF vice president Narendra Batra also resigned his post and said to media that it is collective failure of the federation. However President of IHF KPS Gill has not reacted much.
Whatever the incidents might happen in my opinion, Indian Hockey Team should plan more and improve the skills and come back strongly. Indian team must bring back the glory of the past and strong planning is needed from Administration, players & coach. I wish all the best to Indian Men’s Hockey team…..
Vamsi ............. :)
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