Indian team’s defence needs to display more coordination: Sreejesh

The gap between India’s World Cup exit and the opening whistle at the Asian Games — close to four weeks — gives the players and coaches barely enough time to catch their breath, let alone rebuild completely.

And former captain and goalkeeper P.R. Sreejesh, who believes that Indian hockey is not broken but rather stuck in a loop of avoidable mistakes, attributed the men’s team’s recurring defensive lapses to structural gaps.

“When we used to play, we used to go for more man-to-man marking... Nowadays we’re playing a system which is very deep and different, which needs more communication and understanding, because you may see two or three people in the same zone, and sometimes you get confused about whom you should go and mark,” he explained in a virtual interaction.