Sohail Abbas After Scoring Goal
After drawing the match against Spain and some attentions of Pakistani viewers green shirts managed time win their second match in Olympics against Argentine by two goals. This has definitely given hope and some happiness to the deprived nation and Pakistani hockey fans though the ranked 9 team Argentine was slightly weaker as compared to green shirts. With all this praise green shirts have collected the have huge responsibility to meet during the matches against Australia and Great Britain. Team Pakistan played quite an attacking hockey yesterday and the strategy of mid field filled with more players work by giving backup support to the forward strikers. Though team missed many chances in second half where the factor of ‘lazy legs’ was seen especially from the older members of the team. During the match defence was better and complimented the attack, something that was missing against Spain.
On the other hand Argentine played defensively in most of the part of the match especially in first half. However, some of their attacks were exceptionally well but they were defended well particularly by Full back, Muhammad Irfan, and half back, Rasheed Mahmood. Having said that goalkeeper Imran Shah is still under performed as most of the times he has been lucky.
Pakistan scored both the goals on penalty corners where first one was the result of indiscipline attitude of Argentinean players and the other was result of prompt appeal from Rehan Butt. Fist goal was scored by Muhammad Imran durIng 30th minute of the match. This was actually gambling move as Imran is normally a defender and drag flicks are handled by the expert Soahil Abbas who showed his expertise in 44th minute by scoring a goal and breaking his own record of most goals.
Now team Pakistan and the management most not take this victory to head because every next game is very important. Especially against Team GB who will be in field with home advantage on their side, and Australia who is actually haunting every one with 11 goals to none in two matches. With the combination of attack and counter attack complimented by defence Pakistan must consider the lazy legs problem of second half in order to get space in semi finals.
