This is coach Paul van ass’ moment. Ever since he took over as the coach of the Indian hockey, he was under pressure to deliver in his very first assignment—the Sultan Azlan Shah cup. And it is indeed his moment now as the team clinched the bronze medal by beating South Korea.
And the coach feels this has been a good tournament and a lot of lessons learnt.
“My target is to learn lessons. In life, you can learn lessons every day. And we learnt six good lessons in the tournament. It is a good start for us. It is a high performance sport. We have seen a lot and learnt a lot,” the coach said after the bronze medal win.
Unlike the previous match against Australia, India did not dominate the first match. India took lead twice, thanks to the goals scored by Nikkin Thimmaiah and Satbir Singh, but Korea managed an equalizer on both occasions. After a 2-2 draw, the match went to the shoot-outs, in which Sreejesh did wonders to make India win.
“The shoot-out was of high quality. But the match was not of a very high quality. We started slow, but we got the game in the second quarter. The second goal for korea came off the penalty corner. I think it was an unnecessary corner. That should not have happened. But, we hung in fortunately,” he said.