We have reached the semi-final of the World Cup. That is really great and we are quite happy about it. I am personally so happy to have reached the semi-final with this team, it is a great feeling. We have lots of fans on the stand now, there are a few parents and the rest are local people from the embassy. They have been fantastic in supporting us here and we dressed them up in German shirts now so they can be identified.
We really can hear them shouting for us on the pitch, the support has been tremendous. We played well for 60 minutes, but unfortunately we were having a bit of a weak streak in the second half where we let in two goals and opened up the game again for New Zealand, but luckily we managed to regain control of the game and scored to win and qualify for the semi-final which was very much our goal before the tournament.
The other day we had a day at the embassy and the invited the Indian sports minister for a talk with our captain Max Mueller and our coach Markus Weise. They discussed a lot of things and talked about hockey, about Indian hockey a bit and the differences – and why we are so good! We then played some games with schoolkids from the people there, a bit of hockey through a course and things like that. We taught them a bit of hockey and they had to shoot at goal and then do the Indian dribble. None of those kids knew hockey before. Then we of course gave them winner T-shirts and I think everybody had great fun.
We also presented a local school with something that we brought for them: Some volleyballs which they needed for their school. We had a great day. The food was good, they had a huge bufffet in the garden which was a great setting – and of course it was great food, as you know hockey players are always hungry.
We used the opportunity to ask as many people there to come out to the stadium and support us and I guess for the group games it worked so now they just have to keep on coming for the semi final! For the day before the rest day we got inivited to the private house of one of the embassy people and again had dinner there in the garden with steak and pasta – and they even had a crepes booth! Of course we again got carried away and started to play soccer with the kids!
On the rest day, finally we got sent to Delhi in small groups and soaked up the amazing atmosphere. We went to Connaught Place and the Khan market, which was really great and we enjoyed the break very much. It certainly was an interesting experience to go with an auto rikscha through the traffic – before we had only gone on bike rikschas. Delhi traffic is very different to the traffic we know. Of course, we had training again in the evening and then already started our preparation for the England game.