New Delhi: Reigning Olympic champions Germany were brought down to earth after their big win on the opening day by lower-rated England who chalked out a narrow 2-1 Pool A victory in the League Final here on Saturday.
England began with a bang surprising the tournament favourites with an early goal in the very 4th minute. Put in possession just outside the circle, Tom Carson cut into the circle and to find Linus Butt, the only man defending in the circle. He deftly turned around to hoodwink Linus and sent in a powerful shot into the boards that made German goalkeeper Nicolas Jacobi a mere spectator.
Germany appeared to make a comeback scoring through Marko Miltkau field goal in the 11th minute following a goal-mouth melee where the English goalie George Pinner warded off twice but could not prevent Marko from tapping-in the rebound. The contested goal remained after the referral.
A penalty corner conversion in the 21st minute saw England forge ahead once again after Ashley Jackson flick deflected off defender Tobias Matania’s stick.
Thereafter, the Germans failed to come back into the game with England defenders Tim Whiteman and Michael Hoare, in particular, thwarting their moves. Towards the end, Germans forced a penalty corner but the post denied them an equalizer.
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Bobby Crutchley, England coach, said that he was pleased with his team’s performance but warned that there were still many errors to be ironed out. “I am obviously pleased with the win, but our quality dropped when we came under pressure. We should have taken the chance to hurt them when they came at us, as they left spaces.”
England’s Harry Martin stressed that his team had worked very hard to secure the victory. “We got through on guts and determination. I hope that we will have to rely less on hard work and more on our play in the next matches.” Germany’s Christopher Wesley said: “Maybe we have suffered from yesterday’s 6-1 win over New Zealand. Today we missed 10 to 20 per cent of our performance.”
“I’m not happy with our performance in the first half. I missed the spirit. The second half was much better as we created many chances”, said German coach Markus Weise. Captain Oliver Korn added: “We need to check the video to see what went wrong.”
“I was quite pleased with the start to the tournament after a long winter break. We did not have a camp. Our focus is not on this tournament and we have enough time for the World Cup. We are not worried too much about winning the league,’’ Weise quipped.
When asked about the game with India after the rest day, the German coach said that there will no change in their strategy and they would be playing their normal game.
(With inputs from FIH news)