I am so sad. (already despondent due to polictical and economic situation in the country). We are no longer among top 6!
FIH launches WorldHockey Champions Trophy website
03 Jun 2008 07:24
Six of the world’s best men’s hockey teams will meet in Rotterdam, Netherlands at the end of June when the WorldHockey Champions Trophy is scheduled. The FIH recently launched the special website for this elite tournament in which Australia, Argentina, Germany, Korea, Netherlands and Spain will participate.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
I know, but looking at the recent Pakistani performance, Pakistan did not deserve to be in this Champions Trophy. I mean they lost the recently conducted Sultan Azlan Shah Cup and came 4th out of 7, second tier teams.
Let's see where they would finish in the Olympics.
I am guessing Germany would win this Champions Trophy.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
Pakistan should withdraw from the olympics. After shameful defeat at the hands of Belgium today, they do not deserve to play in the olympics.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
well i dont think they will do nething like tht ....
infact ...
Pakistan cricket team lost against ireland ... but was finalist in 20-20 Worldcup ......
So u can neva predict result if Pakistani team is playing :)
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
^ It's hockey we are talking about, where Pakistani team is very capable of losing from any low ranking team. They lost 4-2 to Belgium today.
Now they are going to play a 4 nation tournament in Ireland, let's see what happens there.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
Pakistan has a precious record in hockey, in order to save that record, PHF should not send this worst team to the olympics. One can easily predict the wooden spoon game for this team at Beijing.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
^ Pakistan has shown some results in patches here and there. They had beaten Malaysia,New Zealand and Canada but then lost to Belgium and India at Sultan Azlan Shah Cup last month.
Rehan Butt, Muhammad Saqlain and Shakeel Abbasi are somewhat playing good.
But then Jamali had also banned Sohail Abbas and other players who have played for the International Hockey Clubs recently, so now Pakistan has to rely on existing talent .
The other problem is that of non-availabilty of good coaches. Till when Roelant Oltmans was there, Pakistan was atleast in the Champions Trophy.
On the other hand Belgium that had also beaten Pakistan in the last month's Sultan Azlan Shah cup by 5-3 margin, has shown some good results recently, they had also qualified directly for the Olympics by beating Germany in the Euro Hockey last year.
With current form and that too if Pakistan plays sensibly, i am guessing they might end up somewhere between 6-9 in the Olympics.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
PAK Hockey is gone. Players pay is poor they don't seem motivated any more. + What does Mir Jamali know about Hocket? Get that contract killer out of the Hockey Federation.
P****akistan hockey: Going through a heart-breaking slump Wednesday, June 11, 2008By By Khalid Hussain
KARACHI: What do you do if you are the secretary of the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) at a time when your team is constantly losing to underdogs like Belgium just a couple of months before the start of the Olympic Games? You just go out for a walk, almost all the time!
That’s precisely what people close to Khalid Mehmood, the PHF secretary, claim whenever this scribe calls on his cell phone to discuss the latest slump to have hit Pakistan hockey.
“He is gone out for a walk,” is the answer you will get from his son or anybody else who picks up his phone. Whether you call on a scorching afternoon or even after the sun is down, doesn’t matter.
It’s quite clear that Khalid is trying to avoid the media at a time when reporters have nothing but hard-hitting questions to fire at the PHF top brass.
With their team losing to minnows like China, New Zealand and Belgium, PHF officials have been ducking for cover for the last several months.
Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the PHF president, is almost always unavailable either due to his political engagements or health reasons.
That leaves Khalid at the helm of national hockey affairs. But he has never been an active secretary and a heart surgery he underwent a few months back has forced the former Olympian to confine himself to quite a hands-off arrangement.
The net result of the rather reclusive roles played by the PHF top bosses is further agony for Pakistan hockey.
With the Olympic Games set to get underway in Beijing just about two months from now, Pakistan’s preparations for the quadrennial spectacle seem quite inadequate, to say the least.
The national team’s performance graph continues to nose dive. In fact they’ve become so bad that top class teams like Holland and Australia are not even interested in playing against the record four-time world champions.
PHF officials tried their best to line-up big games during a marathon tour of Europe to prepare their charges for the Olympics. But they had to do with matches against lowly club teams or junior outfits in France and Belgium. Pakistan won those games but what their players gained from those low-profile matches is anybody’s guess.
The ‘Test’ matches that Pakistan played against Germany and Belgium during what has been quite a disappointing tour of Europe so far ended with crushing defeats for the visitors.
It is hard to comprehend why the PHF opted to spend precious funds on the European sojourn when it was unable to line-up many competitive games for the national team. Our players could hardly learn anything by playing against local village teams in the French countryside.
Before going to Europe, the Pakistanis competed in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup as the top seeds. With top teams like Olympic champions Australia, world champions Germany, Holland and Spain deciding against taking part in the tournament in Ipoh, Pakistan had an excellent chance of regaining the title. But they flopped miserably in the seven-nation contest.
It is quite evident that Pakistan hockey is going through its darkest phase.
The national team has been flopping in almost every international assignment while the officials running the game choose to hibernate rather than doing something to curb the decline.
At a time like this, concrete actions have to be taken to lift what is still our national game.
And it is quite clear that the current set-up of the PHF is not good enough to revive Pakistan hockey.
As Hassan Sardar said in an interview with this correspondent last year that the “group of old men with little know-how of the modern game is completely ill-equipped to run Pakistan hockey in a befitting manner”.
Hassan, one of the most celebrated strikers of Pakistan, had at that time warned that Pakistan hockey will suffer some irreparable damage if it will stay in the hands of the current PHF set-up.
It is quite clear that the concerned authorities were not listening. Hockey continues to be controlled by the same set of officials and things look gloomy.
And the fact that all this is happening so close to the Olympics is quite heartbreaking for the country’s sports fans.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
Pakistan Hockey is on another expansive tour of Europe now, where they have played the Junior and some club teams in France and also Belgium(where they lost twice to the senior team).
Now they are in Ireland in a 4 nations tournament(Called Setanta cup) The other 3 teams include the low ranked Ireland and also Great Britain & Canada.
Lately the management has failed to get big tournaments for the Pakistani team as most top class teams don't take them a worthy opponent. They have failed to book matches with the likes of Germany, Netherlands or the Australians.
Today they beat Ireland with difficulty, which is ranked lowly at 19 in the world. Ireland was leading 2-0 at one point in game.
Let's see why we are no longer among top 6
The following are clearly better than us - Australia, Holland, Germany, Spain & Korea
Against England, NZ, Argentina and India we win some lose some (get beaten more often it seems these days)
We even struggle to beat sides like Malaysia, China, Belgium and Japan
so it's no surprise at all that we are out of the Champion's Trophy
I remember in the mid-late 80s we used to beat Spain 6-1 or 5-2! and never ever lost to them. The only two teams that tested us back then were Holland and West Germany. Even Australia struggled to beat us, such was the domination of our forwards.
Maybe we should do what Zimbabwe did in cricket i.e. take a long break from hockey until we have ironed out certain basic deficiencies such as weakness in defence, unearthed some really good forwards etc. We need to raise the salaries of our national players to revive some interest amongst youngsters in hockey. The motivation is just not there. Most importantly we need to get rid of Jamali. Better to have some ex-star player like Samiullah or Hasan Sardar as the head of PHF.
Let's see why we are no longer among top 6
We are still among Top 6 according to the latest FIH world Rankings. There is
1-Germany, 2- Australia, 3- Netherlands, 4- Spain, 5- Korea, 6- Pakistan.
We did not qualify for this years Champions Trophy because of 2 reasons.
First, last years(2007)Champions Trophy was supposed to be conducted in Lahore but teams like Australia , Germany and other European countries refused to play in Pakistan because of security reasons. The CT was then shifted to Kuala Lumpur. Pakistan had a real good chance of making it to the top, if that CT would have been conducted in Lahore.
Secondly Pakistan finished 7th in Kuala Lumpur and Argentina gets its place in this year's CT as they had won the "Champions Challenge Tournamnet" last year.
If Pakistan finishes in top six at the Olympics in Beijing, they would again be at next year's CT.
In regards to the other teams like Spain well they have excelled a lot in the last 2 decades and are almost at par with those of Dutch and German teams.
^ Thanks for the clarification but 6th position still is nothing to brag about. We should really be better than Spain and Korea. It is deplorable the way our hockey has declined over the past two decades. I still remember the 1984 Olympics in LA. My father woke us all up at 2 or 3 am shouting with excitement 'wake up everyone, Hassan has scored'. Hassan Sardar scored in the 10th minute in the semi-final against Australia and thankfully we managed to protect that lead over the next 60 minutes. The Aussies had a few chances in the second half but our goal-keeper Shahid Ali Khan was equal to the task. These days if someone woke me up in the early hours to watch hockey, I would give him a serious telling off.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
Rootay hain cham cham ray!
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
Pakistan's ranking is likely to drop below after the olympics as wooden spoon play off is the most likely match for them!
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
So it begins: First day results are:
Australia 5 Korea 3
Germany 2 Argentina 2
Netherlands 3 Spain 1
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
It looks like the Argentines are going to upset the Aussies today - leading 2-0 after 20 mins of play.
Re: 2nd Champions Tropy without Pakistan
Argentina won that match eventually by 2-1.
