Times of India: Encouraging to find boys do well in all departments: Harendra

LUCKNOW: Indian junior team’s head coach Harendra Singh was very “happy” with the performance of his boys in the World Cup opener against Canada as it was “encouraging” to witness them do well in all departments.

India on Thursday spanked Canada 4-0 in their opening Pool C match to start their campaign on a resounding note.
“We are happy with our performance in the first match. All compliments to the boys for holding on to their nerves. They played as per plan. We know if we keep going like this, we will achieve our goal,” Harendra said at the post-match press conference.

Harendra said it was heartening to witness India dominating all departments of the game against Canada.

“I will give full credit to the team. Every team comes here to win but look at the margin, possession of ball, circle penetrations, shots on goal, penalty corners we were by far the superior side. We also did not concede a single penalty corner that shows us that we were superior structure wise,” he said.

“In any World Cup, it is important to win earn three points and to achieve that by such a margin is encouraging.”
“I feel scoring four goals and attacking so much proves that the boys have fulfilled my expectation. But they have more potential and we show that in future,” he added.

The coach, however, said they will need to work on a few grey areas and keep on improving as the tournament progresses.

“But yes, there is always need for improvement and we will analyse on our today’s game and try to keep on improving.”

Senior team’s chief coach Roelant Oltmans, who is a part of the coaching side here, too agreed with Harendra.

“In every tournament, the first game is difficult. You have to find your rhythm. It took the boys little while to find the rhythm properly. Mandeep’s goal late in the first half gave us confidence. In the second half, we decided to put more pressure. The boys showed fantastic attacking skills, scoring 4 goals in a match is not a small thing,” the Dutchman said.

“For most of the boys, it is the first time they are playing such a big tournament with so much of expectations around. So I feel they did a good job. Structure wise we played a good game.”

Fog was always thought to be an issue going into the late evening match, but Oltmans said they never think about external factors before any match.

“We focus on the job we have to do we don’t focus on things that is not in our hands. If it happens like that then we have to resort to plan B that is always there in our minds. We started in time and during the game, there were no problems or concerns,” he concluded.