Men's Hockey World Cup 2018: 5 favourites to win the title

#4 Germany

The Germans will be hoping for a better outing at Bhubaneswar this time around

The Germans have, rather surprisingly, slipped to the sixth position as far the FIH World Rankings are concerned but the Olympic bronze medalists are still a force to reckon with if only they manage to acclimatise to local conditions better than they did last December.

At the Hockey World League Finals, at Bhubaneswar last year, seven German players fell ill in the latter stages of the tournament. Stefan Kermas' side lost the semifinals to long-time rivals Australia and had no players on the bench for the bronze-medal match.

Despite the massive setback, eleven German players displayed remarkable resilience to make the Indians sweat it out before losing by a narrow 1-2 margin.

Prior to the Rio Olympics, the Germans were, for the most part, perched in the third position, behind Australia and Holland in the world rankings.

At Rio, the Germans remained unbeaten in the pool stages, finishing ahead of Holland, Argentina, and India, and tamed New Zealand in the quarterfinals, before being sunk by a Peillat hattrick which saw the Argentinians proceed to the final.

The German camp has made elaborate arrangements for their Bhubaneswar sojourn, in order to avoid a repeat of the HWL fiasco and will be keen to make it all they to the podium following a trial by fire in the World Cup's toughest pool.