Times of India: ‘Oltmans lost interest, his tactics became predictable’

By Alok Sinha

NEW DELHI: The removal of Dutch coach Roelant Oltmans was primarily due to a growing lack of interest on his part and the inconsistent performance of the men’s team, sources in Hockey India said on Friday.

“There is no doubt Oltmans is a very good coach and helped the Indian team take bold strides. However, he seemed to have lost interest after the Rio Olympics. His involvement with the players was not as much as we all would have liked it to be. He seemed to be simply drifting in his job,” sources told TOI on Friday.

Sources said HI had analysed the data of the past year to see where things were going wrong. “In his defence, the coach pointed out that in close matches which India lost, the team has almost 60% of ball possession and more circle penetrations than the rival team. We found out that the ball possession was mostly in Indian half and most circle penetrations were long passes which failed to find the forwards.

“The rival teams scored three goals with 10 circle penetrations against us and we scored just one off 15. This shows we were being tactically outplayed. You can’t play a defensive game and hope to win key games. The aggression was missing,” sources said.

It was also claimed that the players were “confused” with drastic changes in strategy in every match.

“Oltmans had become predictable and tried to make sudden changes. It did not work. We introduced six young players from the junior World Cup-winning team to the senior lot but Oltmans gave them very poor grades. He was not willing to give them a chance. We explained this to Sports Authority of India (SAI). They were finally convinced we needed a young, dynamic man to guide our boys,” a source said, adding, “Oltmans’ growing business interests in India had also distracted him.”