BHUBANESWAR: Argentina coach Carlos Retegui was a little late for the post-match press conference but it was well worth waiting for. When he walked in, he had the look of a man with an axe to grind.
The Olympic champions had just beaten India in the semifinals but Retegui couldn’t have cared less about that. The International Hockey Federation (FIH) was his intended target and he let it rip. To a question regarding why the team flagged during the last quarter, his opening salvo was: “We first have to talk about the FIH.”
His grouse with the world body wasn’t about forcing the team to play in less than ideal turf conditions — it was more suited to building paper boats than playing an international hockey match — but the scheduling of the tournament.
“India had a day’s rest and were in better condition than us as we played yesterday (against Spain in the quarterfinals). We don’t know why two semifinals were not held on the same day. Australia (who play their semifinal against Germany on Saturday) in nine days has played four matches. We played four games in six days. It’s not fair.”
He does have a point — Argentina, in the last 36 hours, have played the quarterfinals as well as the semifinals. To further complicate matters, Los Leonas were only informed at 10.00 pm on Thursday evening that they would be playing on Friday. The match in itself was played in poor weather. A deep depression had been giving steady rainfall to the city from the early hours of Friday. That drizzle became a solid downpour by the time the match began.
Most of Retegui’s men ply their trade in Europe where conditions like this are more common and that experience showed in the first two quarters. The visitors had more circle penetrations, knew what to do when in possession and did not panic.
The Indians, on the other hand, were struggling to adapt. They didn’t know what kind of weight to put on simple passes and with their counter-attacking game falling foul of the weather, they took time to reconfigure.
By the time they had done that, they were a goal down. Argentina’s gameplan for the entire match was to try and earn penalty corners but they didn’t execute that properly. They only had one. It, however, was enough as Gonzalo Peillat — he is to drag-flicks what Hercule Poirot is to whodunits — found the net in the 17th minute.
Peillat, one of the many who plays in Europe, revealed the team played a variation on their short corner to budget for all the standing water. “We pushed it closer so both (ejector and stopper) was shorter (to the goal) and we just to tried to flick it from there.” It obviously worked. To compound matters, skipper Manpreet Singh was sent off for a yellow card during the second-quarter.
As the match entered the fourth quarter, two things happened. Argentina tired and India grew into the encounter. With The Lions happy to just airlift the ball at every available opportunity, Sjoerd Marijne’s men set camp in the opposition half.
But for all that possession and circle entries (80% and seven respectively) in the last 15 minutes, there were very few actual moments of alarm for the Argentina custodian, Juan Vivaldi. India did not have any short corners in that duration of time and no clear-cut chances. They huffed and puffed till the end but failed because they lacked the cutting edge required to decide encounters like these.
To their credit, they did little wrong. Marijne was also of the same opinion. “You have to deal with the circumstances. It is what it is. I am not disappointed about the performances. I can’t blame anyone for this loss. If you concede only one PC against Argentina, then you have done a really good job.” However, that wasn’t good enough in the end. They will now play one of Australia or Germany in the third-fourth playoff on Sunday.
swaroop@newindianexpress. com