The World Cup silver medalist and depending champions Netherlands faced a humiliation of sort when they lost to hitherto out of form Pakistan at a good score of 2-4.
The defeat at the hands of Pakistan which led to their early exit from the champions Trophy will haunt the Netherlands for quite some time. But, this is more disappointing for their coach Max Caldas, who took over the reins after the World Cup.
After the match, the coach talked www.stick2hockey.com about his stint with the team and what went wrong.
You have taken over as the coach of the Netherlands team recently. Is it a difficult job to manage a star team?
No, not exactly. It is not difficult to manage. The goal of any tournament is improvement. We were here in the tournament to see where we stand. I think hockey-wise, we are improving, but we are letting ourselves down mentally. It needs to be addressed very fast.
Netherlands was the best team of the tournament until it lost two back to back matches against India and Pakistan. What went wrong in the last two games?
We didn’t have the rotations in the matches. We need to be very disciplined to win a game, we were not disciplined. We played twice on our own errors. We were not very good on the pitch.
The format of the tournament is such that every team qualifies in the quarter-finals. Do you think it cost you a bit?
No, format is a format. You need to be very good everyday and we were not very good today.
What are your aspirations for the team? Where do you want see the Netherlands team in the future?
Our main focus is to win the gold in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Every tournament is a preparation for that. Today was a nice lesson for us.