Indian men’s hockey chief coach Graham Reid urged his team to control emotions in the Tokyo Olympic semi-final against Belgium on Tuesday. The Australian expressed happiness on the 3-1 victory over Great Britain in the quarterfinals on Sunday and spoke highly of their ability to fight and defend a lead, he put the subject of discipline under the scanner.

India were shown two green cards and one yellow in the game and the Australian said it’s something that should be avoided in an encounter with a team of the caliber of Belgium who beat Spain 3-1 in their quarterfinal after falling behind.

“I am very proud of the players. We fought hard and sometimes that is what you have to do in final situations of a crunch game like a quarterfinals. You have to fight, bite and scratch. We were very lucky yesterday because they (Great Britain) created more opportunities than us but our PC defence and Sreejesh especially were magnificent last night. They saved us. But looking forward, the things we can learn from last night is that there is a difference between passion and emotion. Sometimes, we let our emotions take over. We need to keep 11 players on the pitch. The problem is that we played a lot of our game against Great Britain with 10 men on the pitch”.

“We can’t do that against Belgium and think that we can be victorious. That will be the big message to the team today when we have a meeting,” asserted Reid.

India did not force any PCs in the match but scored all three from open play. Dilpreet Singh (7’), Gurjant Singh (16’) and Hardik Singh (57’) struck field goals and Reid said that was a huge plus.

However, the Australian who won an Olympic silver medal at Barcelona 1992 believes there’s much work to be done in ensuring a sustained attack.

“It was great to score field goals against Great Britain. We didn’t get any corners, so of course we also need to be working on a sustained attacking pressure which I always talk about with the players. As I said, against a team like Belgium, it will be very important to keep all 11 players on the pitch the entire duration,” added Reid.

India are on the cusp of creating history. The last entry into an Olympic final occurred 41 years ago in Moscow.

India hope to ride on recent positive resuts against Belgium as they take the pitch at the Oi Stadium in Tokyo. They beat the Red Lions in the FIH Pro League in 2020, winning 2-1 after losing the first of the double headers 2-3 in Bhubaneswar.

Prior to that, India beat Belgium 5-1, 2-1 and 2-0 in 2019 in test matches. The 2018 Champions Trophy encounter ended 1-1 and so did the Bhubaneswar World Cup match later that year which ended 2-2.

Captain Manpreet Singh, said, however, that head-to-head stats make little difference in an Olympic semi-final.

“As far as Belgium is concerned, obviously they and Australia have been sharing the World No.1 spot for the last 18-24 months. So, in that sense, they will be a very difficult opponent. But we have played them a fair bit in the past and have the experience of doing well against them too. So, we need to focus on the things that we can do against them and make sure that we are much more disciplined in defence and our structure is much better,” Manpreet said.

Reflecting on the week gone by, Manpreet praised the squad’s spirit to fight back. “If you look back at what this group has been through, I think we showed a lot of determination and the willingness to fight particularly in the quarterfinal. That’s a real plus. We are going to need that same fighting spirit against Belgium tomorrow.”

The match is slated for  07.00 AM (IST) start.