We need to improve penalty shootout skills: Tahir Zaman

KARACHI: Pakistan hockey team’s head coach, Tahir Zaman, said on Saturday he was satisfied with the way the Greenshirts played in the recently-concluded Asian Champions Trophy despite failing to make the finals with a shocking defeat against the hosts China in the penalty shootout in the semifinal.

While talking to The News, Tahir lamented the lack of skills and mental toughness which caused Pakistan’s defeat in the shootout as they failed to score any goal in four attempts.

Tahir said he will submit the report on Pakistan’s performance in the six-team event, where they managed a bronze with a 5-2 win over South Korea in the third-place match, to PHF in the next few days with several recommendations.

“I joined the team just one day before the competition and didn’t have enough time to implement well strategic plans. Thus, focused on enabling the players to display their natural game,” he said.

The newly-appointed coach said that some misfortunes struck the team at the deep end of the event, including the sudden death of forward Gazanfar’s father a day before the semifinals.

“In the match against India, we played 17 minutes with 10 players and suffered as a result. While our prolific drag flicker Abu Bakar got injured and could not play matches against India and China,” Tahir said.

“Penalty shootouts have turned out to be our biggest weakness. We did well, beating Japan, competed well against the 5th ranked strong Indian unit,” he said.

“We must consider that we didn’t have experience of playing in big events. But despite that, we went ahead of India before they came back with two goals, while Japan are the Asian champions.”

For Pakistan, the attacking line showed great displays of circle penetrations. Shahid Hanan and Ahmed Nadeem scored 6 goals each, while Sufyan Khan scored 4.

“Our forwards played amazingly, scoring some amazing field goals. In total, Pakistan scored 18 goals, out of which 14 were field goals, while the other 4 were on penalty corners.

Apart from the attacking line, the goalkeepers also put on an improved show and showed that with further impetus, they can do well,” said Tahir.

“Yes, we did lose to China, but we have to accept that they are not a weak side. The way they played in the final, allowing India to score only one goal is a testament to that fact,” he said.

“Areas such as cleverness, dribbling, mental toughness, game awareness, and dodging are the domains we need to work on. We are passing through a phase of transformation. And despite the odds, our team has shown signs of improvement,” he said.