1978: How we managed the Cup at Buenos Aires
No other team could match the Europeans particularly Holland and west Germany, in the ability to score penalty-goals. Pakistan, in order to survive nd finally to defeat these formidable teams, had first of all to improve its defence tactics so that fouls result in severe penalties were minimized, secondly improve the defence against penalty corners and corners and finally polish the ability to score the penalty goals.
The first target of coaching the world cup team was to re-mould the left-half’s defence to ensure that his tackling was to be done above the danger zone. Within the danger zone the lefthalf’s tackling was to be in such a manner that he would not concede any fouls and at the same time bring the rival attacker on his wrong side. In case it was impossible to tackle without fouling, the defender was explicitly instructed to forget tackling and let the opponent try at the goal, in fact this last instruction pertaining to tackling in the danger zone was given to al the defenders. Our theory was that the Europeans are weak at converting field goals and hence they could do little harm by trying directly at the goal. I may add here that the Europeans strategy of defence was just the reverse. They were aware that we were not that good at scoring the penalty goals, hence their defence would not let us score field goals but would rather concede penalty corners and corners.
The world cup tem had weak halfline. In fact the experts said that Pakistan had played without a halfine in Pakistan — India series – it was that bad. Every effort had to be made to close the cracks in or defence. For this the fullbacks were asked to a play closer to their halves while the inners were expected to fall back and help in the defence, at least in the initial stage of the counter attack. In this manner we were successful to a great extent in closing the gap.
All 11 players in the team are never of equal merit. Hence it depends on team training how these components are adjusted to each other I will repeat that it is a team which wins, individuals do not win and nothing can be achieved without cooperation and understanding. Although I am not going to praise the Pakistan halfline, I will nevertheless give them due credit along with the fullbacks and those forwards from whom we had sought help in the defence and own the title.
It was important how we would defend against the penalty corners and corners. An alarming factor had introduced itself just before the world cup. India had toured Holland There it lost by five goals. The Pakistan-India series had shown that we were (with the exception of the Karachi match) only one goal superior to each other. Pakistan won the Bombay match 2-1, Bangalore 3-2, Karachi match 6-0 and lost the Lahore match 1-2. Holland had , therefore, exhibited a five goal superiority to the same Indian team this was naturally a worrying point for Pakistan
Holland was with Pakistan in Pool B. Upon reaching Buenos Aires I spoke to Indian coach RS Gentle and asked him what was the cause of conceding such a high margin of goals to Holland. I was aware that without help, without knowing how it all happened, I would have trouble preparing accouter against the formidable Dutch who were our main rivals in the pool. Gentle explained it was entirely due to their expertise in penalty goals. In order to prepare a ma meaningful counter against the Dutch we had a film made of their best scorers, Paul Litjens in the action of taking the penalty corner strikes. The impression was that this top most scorer of the World Cup could alone win the World Cup for Holland with excellent scoring ability. So we had to counter him if we could continue dreaming about winning the world cup. Holland met us in the pool and again in the final.
In the training camp we had already prepared a defence against the penalty corner, but the film helped us in pinpoint the flaw in timing between the striker and the defender who dashes to spoil the striker, there was a point five second’s difference. Paul Litjens’ strike took 1.5 seconds from start to finish while Islahuddin’s dash (nowadays charge) took a little less than two seconds. Being aware of this flaw, we were able to counter it with a speedier dash.
Source: Excerpts from How to become World Champions by Abdul Waheed Khan