FIH's Hockey Pro League - (Men's and Women's)

[sameerph]

And today our men beat Spain 2-0 .

[sameerph]

Last 2 matches 2 losses for our women against Spain 0-2 yesterday and 0-1 today.

In men, we lost to Germany 1-4 but won today 1-0.

[ssp]

Men have been inconsistent. As I've said many times before, the selectors & coaches should use the Pro League to try out replacements for the ageing players and known failures. The results won't be much worse than these (4-1 loss to an experimental German team is pathetic). We've added a couple of new players with my favourite, Rajinder showing good promise.

The women have tried out more youngsters, which is encouraging. Spain's results have been good, so a couple of close losses isn't terrible. However, I think we will do well to avoid relegation from this Pro league season.

[ssp]

Very nice win for our women over Germany today, which has been highlight of this Pro league season for me so far. After losing 4-0 yesterday, we turned it around very nicely today.

Even more surprisingly, Mandeep ran 20m with the ball and scored a goal all on his own yesterday v Ireland. And scored again today (usual deflection) and created a goal too. That's not great news as this means he's guaranteed selection till the 2030 Olympics now!

I was more pleased to see new players being given a chance-Yashdeep Siwach, Angad Bir Singh, Araijit and Uttam. I was also pleased to see Sanjay (who has been excellent for the past 2 years) being tried out in central defence. We badly need 2-3 quality defenders. I think we have decent depth in midfield and attack now. I don't mind losing games in the Pro league if we can find 2-3 good players.

Both men's and women's team make too many silly errors to be considered truly competitive with the best European and Aussie teams. Our men also play poorly against Netherlands and Australia, yet seem to be confident and incisive against the likes of Ireland or other lower ranked teams.

I'll be very happy if our women can produce some good results and avoid relegation and our men finish around 4-5th position.

[sameerph]

^^ I was about to say that Mandeep is playing well in this series and you posted it, SSP.

Our women defended really well against Germany yesterday and alternate GK Bicchu was also good. Now, we have tough matches against Netherlands coming up. How many teams are relagated ? Still there are quite a few matches left right in this year's league?

[arjun2761]

Men lose 2-3 to England and women lose 2-4 to Netherlands in most recent round of matches.

On a ppg basis, I believe the men are 4th of the 9 teams. The women are 7th out of 9.

[sameerph]

Men lose 2-3 to England and women lose 2-4 to Netherlands in most recent round of matches.

I watched large part of mens match against England and we were dominating in second half but could not make it count. Some 9 PC's but no goal, Harmanpreet seems to be somewhat below par and Jugraj is not able to covert PC's. Hope we do better in our second match against England today.

It is a good result for women to lose only 2-4 against Netherlands. Netherlands is by far the best team in the world and previously we have got thrashed by them every time we played them.

[sameerph]

And draw in normal time 2-2 against Netherlands for our women today and a win penalty shoot out. That is really good.

[arjun2761]

The Indian men edge England 2-1.

With that the Indian men move to 3rd (which is much better than their 7th place finish in the last edition).

The shoot out win by the indian women was impressive over table topper Netherlands! They are now in 6th position versus their 8th place finish in last edition and have they actually won more points in 8 matches this year than they won in 16 matches last year).

[sameerph]

IHF has posted on X Deepika's goal as one of the best goals of the season-

Deepika goal in Netherlands match

[ssp]

Excellent result by our women against a pretty strong Dutch team. Even their 2nd XI would beat most other teams of the world. Now, I'm more optimistic about our chances of avoiding relegation, but we have 8 really tough matches remaining (China, Argentina, Australia and Belgium). I suspect we'll need 4-5 points out of these games to finish ahead of England.

Overall, I think our women's team got more out of this set of Pro league matches than the men's side.

Today, 2 brilliant PC strikes by Harmanpreet enabled us to beat England, who introduced several young players. We wasted time on Jarmanpreet, Amit (so many poor passes), Mandeep (reverted to his usual level following 2 good games) and Shamsher.

Most of these players are nearly 30 years old or over. Why not try out some younger players?

[sameerph]

Excellent result by our women against a pretty strong Dutch team. Even their 2nd XI would beat most other teams of the world. Now, I'm more optimistic about our chances of avoiding relegation, but we have 8 really tough matches remaining (China, Argentina, Australia and Belgium). I suspect we'll need 4-5 points out of these games to finish ahead of England.

In the set of 8 matches in India over last few days, our women team had 2 outright wins, 4 outright losses and 2 draws (1 of each ended in PS win, other in loss). So, 9 points. I think losses against Spain hurt, if we could have converted 1 of that into a win we would have been in better position.

So, getting 4-5 points from 8 matches in June in Europe seems doable.

[ssp]

5 points could come from 2 good results- a win and PS win in a drawn game.
In reality (as opposed to the official world rankings), I think Belgium are now the No 2 team in women's hockey, but Argentina and Australia have regressed as they are rebuilding. China are probably No 3.

We make too many unforced errors to consistently compete with the best teams. This explains a 4-0 loss to Germany followed by a 1-0 win the next day.

The men used to be like this about 10 years ago, but we won 2x Olympic bronzes because we've produced some brilliant players (Harmanpreet, Sumit, Sanjay, Hardik, Vivek, Abishekh & Sukhjeet as well veterans, Manpreet & Sreejesh) who allowed us to control possession much, much better than before, when we would gift the ball away after 2-3 passes or simply failed to trap the ball. Fitness and improved physique has been the other key factor. I can see a few excellent prospects in the women's team, but we are still lacking a bit on physique and speed.

[PKBasu]

Our men's team is still ranked only 5th in the world according to the FIH rankings (just ahead of Australia in 6th). Holland, Belgium, England and Germany are ahead of us. I wonder how we keep languishing at 5th or 6th despite being the bronze winners at each of the last two Olympics, and now being placed third in the FIH Pro League as well... (Our poor standing in the last World Cup the key factor still holding our ranking down?).

[sameerph]

Our men's team is still ranked only 5th in the world according to the FIH rankings (just ahead of Australia in 6th). Holland, Belgium, England and Germany are ahead of us. I wonder how we keep languishing at 5th or 6th despite being the bronze winners at each of the last two Olympics, and now being placed third in the FIH Pro League as well... (Our poor standing in the last World Cup the key factor still holding our ranking down?).

The rankings are no longer based on the tournament results but are based on results of matches between teams like Elo ratings. I think similar system is there for FIFA rankings.

This is the documents on FIH rankings-

[url=chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.fih.hockey/static-assets/pd ... y-2020.pdf]FIH new ranking system[/url]