Times of India: HIL: Germany’s Fuchs ready to soar for Mumbai
By Dhananjay Roy
MUMBAI: Over the past eight days, Dabang Mumbai have been training hard in preparation of the new season of the Hockey India League. However, the star of their squad, German striker Florian Fuchs, arrived only on Thursday. The 24-year-old, for whom Mumbai paid a handsome $96,000 at the auction last year, will be their go-to man as the franchise attempt to overcome the woes of HIL-3 when they finished at the bottom of the six-team table.
Fuchs is aware of the huge task that lies ahead of him, but believes his team is more than capable of putting up a good show this time. “We have some terrific guys in the team like Matthew Swann, Jeremy Hayward, the up and coming Indian dragflicker Harmanpreet Singh and many others. All of us are capable of playing top level hockey. The franchise has great expectations, and so does every player of the team,” Fuchs told TOI on Friday.
“Yes, the pressure to perform will be there on us, but it depends on how we approach it. If we take it positively, we will benefit immensely,” he added. One major challenge that every side in the month-long competition contends with is finding their right combination, given that very little time is available to practise as a unit. Nevertheless, Fuchs believes their coach Jay Stacy, the Australian who was appointed recently, is working hard to figure this out.
“Our coach has been working on this. We intend to play a couple of practice games before the league starts and things will begin falling into place. It will be crucial to get this aspect of the game right in order to combine well and build a strong connection on the pitch,” explained the former winner of the FIH Young Player of the Year award.
Unlike the Aussies who have a strong presence in HIL, Germany have been sending only a handful of players to participate in the league. But, Fuchs believes this will change in the coming years once the popularity of the league grows. “A couple of our players are studying and work ing. So this is a barrier for them. Also this is an Olympic year, and some players, especially the younger guys have planned their schedule keeping the Rio Games in mind. Once they grow older, they will be able to handle greater work load.”
When it comes to the Olympics Germany are the two-time defending champions, and there’s an interest ing pattern to their victories. They produced modest results in the run up to the Games before going on to dominate at Beijing in 2008 and Lon don in 2012. But, Fuchs admitted that things will be a lot tougher this time “I know the Olympics is big. I would not say that winning there comes nat urally to us as we worked very hard on both occasions. This time, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Other teams have caught up and are going to be difficult to beat. So, we can’t rely on the myth that the German team wil do extremely well at the Olympics.”