Junior Hockey World Cup: Emphasis on defence, pressure as India gears up to take on Canada

As the Indian junior men's hockey team prepares to meet Canada in their second match, on November 25, of the ongoing FIH Men's Junior Hockey World Cup, the emphasis will be on coordination between the team members.

The Indian men's junior hockey team received a jolt to their World Cup title defense when a young and agile France got the better of India on Wednesday.

The chief coach of the Indian men's hockey team Graham Reid is overseeing the Indian men's junior hockey team for the World Cup as a high performance director. Post India's loss to France, Reid said there was a lack of coordination between the players and it was one of the reasons for their defeat. He said:

"It is hard to get coordination if the basics are not right. At the back, we gave them too many easy balls deep in our territory. We gave them a couple of such chances and the French put everything in the goal. I am not sure how many shots they had but almost all of them were on goal."

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The Indian men's junior hockey team would have gone back to the drawing board to fix the coordination in the basics.

Indian hockey team to create more pressure on ball

Reid added that leaking too many goals will not help the team's cause in any way. The Indian men's junior team gave away five goals and although they scored four, the equalizer and the winning goal remained elusive.

The Indian team would also want to create more pressure on the ball against Canada, something that was missing against France.

Reid threw more light and said:

"It is very hard to give a team five goals and expect to win. I thought we created enough opportunities. We made some basic errors, trapping, we missed some overheads, we hit the post 2-3 times, one shot went across the goal. We need to create more pressure on the ball, we did not do that. Having said that, congratulations to France, they played sharp and wanted to win. Our guys were also keen and did what we could do. Unfortunately, things did not go right for us."