I was lucky enough to attend the World Cup of Hockey, the India versus the Pakistan match that was played on September 9th. I decided to blog about it in hopes of helping bring the world of sports to the masses.
The game was as good as it gets. The play was fast but the shots were clean and the excitement was not lost on the crowd. The players were all over each other and the referee was excellent. Also, the India vs. Pakistan was so exciting to watch that it was like a live broadcast. If you didn’t have a TV, you could still watch the game and it was on through the night.
The reason I mention it is because of a couple of things. First, the team that won the match was India. I am not one to say that India suck but, I was surprised to see the Indian team play with the passion that they did, as well as the skill that they displayed.
The reason I mention the India vs. Pakistan was that a couple of things were just not there. India’s first goal was scored by the same player who scores the goal for Pakistan in the quarterfinal. India had 4 players on the field, as opposed to Pakistan’s team of 5. India didn’t have an attacking midfielder on the field who could get into the box and score. The team that won the match was India.
The final score was indian 4-1. There were no surprises and no excuses. Thats not to say that the Indian team did not perform, but there were just no signs that they were going to, which was a good thing.
That was a game where the Indian team had a lot of chances to score goals, but all of them were blocked by the defense. India also had a couple of players who could get into the box and score goals, but all of them were blocked. India had players who could have scored goals, but all of them were blocked.
In one game India had a player who could have scored goals, but all of these players were blocked, so when the game was over India had a chance to win.
Now that we have a lot of data on how many times a player was blocked or locked during a game, we can begin to see how many times a player was locked against a team of players who have played every game they could possibly have.
In the data, we can see that out of the 11 players who were blocked or locked during the game, a large majority of them ended up being blocked for a reason other than the team being out of their element. The one player who wasn’t blocked that much was the goalkeeper, who was locked against a team of players that had the skill advantage.
There is no denying that the World Cup 2011 was a terrible tournament. I wish I had a better answer for this, but I can only say that it was bad. Even in a game where the goal difference was so close, there was a point where both teams were so far apart that it was impossible to make a decision.
