Hockey World League 2017: India's title hopes end in 0-1 defeat to Argentina in semis

There could be reasons to debate whether India lost to conditions or the opposition but there’s no excuse to the chances they missed in the last five minutes that cost the hosts a 0-1 defeat in the semifinals of the Hockey World League (HWL) at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Friday.

Gonazalo Peillat’s 17th-minute penalty-corner conversion separated the two teams on a day when rain ruled the Odisha capital and the heavy pitch resulted in a cat-and-mouse game after Argentina scored.

There was a discussion between the FIH technical committee before the match because the drizzle got steadier and heavy at times. But they decided to go ahead once the preceding placement game between the Netherlands and England concluded incident-free.

The Argentine strategy was easy to guess even before the match began: Get Peillat a PC; and if he scores, summon all the legs in your half every time India had the ball.

Coach Carlos Retegui’s strategy played to perfection and took different shapes as the match grew older.

Their 11-man-defence plan after scoring remained difficult for India to breach; and once captain Manpreet Singh was shown a yellow card in the 22nd minute, the Indians waited to take the game to half-time 1-0.

The first real chance to equalise came six minutes into the third quarter with two back-to-back penalty corners but Rupinder Pal Singh's dragflick and stop-and-hit-yourself routines didn't work.

The Indians were in their attacking elements in the final quarter, where the Argentines resorted to more and more aerial balls.

From the fence it seemed India too should have done that as the ball travelled slowly on a soaking wet pitch. Coach Sjoerd Marijne explained why they didn’t.

“The reason why we didn’t use the high ball was because they (Argentina) were so back defending. But we wanted to press them the whole match. When you are 0-1 behind, you have to press. We didn’t use it (aerial scoops) more because we were high (forward) on the pitch,” Marijne explained.

Indian attack’s full-press tactics went into an overdrive in the last 10 minutes and then with a kicking-back in the final five. The chances arrived as well, twice each in the 51st and 57th minute, but the all-important goal didn’t happen.

Mandeep Singh, Akashdeep Singh and Gurjant Singh were all guilty of missing when they shouldn’t have.

It’s also worth a debate why India didn’t go for an Argentine foot during their circle penetrations. The pitch was heavy, ball travelled slow and taking shots at goal looked difficult. In such conditions, penalty corners could be the best chance to score, even if you have to reduce the angle of your injection, which is how Argentina used their PC.

But Marijne suggested he wouldn’t want to read too much into this defeat, even if it cost him a shot at the trophy.

"I am not going to watch today’s match again, as I always do. The circumstances (weather conditions) were different. I would really like to play Argentina in normal circumstances and see if we are good enough to beat them. Then I would really know where my team is,” the India coach summed up.

The hosts will next play for the bronze medal on Sunday against the losing team of the second semifinal between Australia and Germany.