The Indian men’s hockey team will look to end the Rourkela leg of the FIH Pro League with a win when they take on Argentina on Sunday at the Birsa Munda Stadium.
Harmanpreet Singh and co. have lost all three matches they played at the venue, two against Belgium and an embarrassing 0-8 defeat against Argentina.
The home team conceded four goals inside 16 minutes on Saturday against Belgium, all four coming from set-pieces but then went on to improve as the match progressed with Aditya Lalage and Harmanpreet scoring a goal each. India lost the match 2-4, showing much-needed fight to reduce the margin of the defeat.
India need all-around improvement in their game. The attack need to create more chances and take them and defensively, the team was poor in the three matches. Indian players made silly mistakes of giving the ball away at dangerous areas, leading to goals. The players were a bit casual off the ball, allowing their opponents plenty of space to create and score.
India head coach Craig Fulton will want to see the kind of hockey they showed in the final two quarters against Belgium on Saturday. The defenders got their tackles and blocks spot on while also created better chances going forward.
Argentina are coming into the match having won four of their seven matches they played so far. They lost both their games against Belgium and are currently fourth in the table behind leaders Belgium, second-place Netherlands and England.
Tomas Domene is in superb form, having scored four times against India in their 8-0 win. He’s topping the goal-scoring charts with 11 strikes to his name, two more than Belgium’s Alexander Hendrickx.
The match will start at 7:30 PM IST.
You follow the match on our blog below:
