Argentina’s return to FIH Hockey Pro league action saw the Olympic champions lose in a close 3-2 match with Germany before succumbing to a 3-0 defeat at the hands of the same opposition.
As Argentina’s Pedro Ibarra had said prior to the encounter with Germany, Los Leones had been more than a year without international action, so some rustiness was inevitable. With two matches against a very competitive Germany now under their belts, Argentina will be looking to bounce back in their next set of FIH Hockey Pro League matches against India.
We spoke to Argentina’s Mariano Ronconi ahead of the clashes between the world’s fifth (India) and sixth (Argentina) ranked teams.
Putting the result on a side, what are the learnings / conclusions you take from these matches against Germany?
Mariano Ronconi: “It is difficult to put the result to one side, but we need to keep a clear head and take conclusions from this match because this has been a great learning opportunity. This is what we needed. We are happy to play again, as we said after the first match, the few things we agreed to improve, we improved them. Despite the result today (3-0 loss to Germany), there are things that went to plan. We controlled the ball more than during the first match and this was our focus. We think this went very well. The difference is that they were very efficient and we didn’t have the same result. But really, this has been very positive, to be back, the boys are happy to be here moving their legs and starting to loosen up, so well, we need to continue to add matches like these ones.”
Argentina have been many months without playing an international game. Did the players perform as you were expecting?
Mariano Ronconi: We found everything that we knew was going to happen: we lacked connections between players, we lacked playing as a team and it is normal because it’s been about 13 months that we haven’t played. There is no way to train for this, this is a reality. The only way to train is by playing so we will keep on playing as much as we can if the pandemic allows.
You continue next weekend with two games against India, how do you think these matches will go as India is a different team than Germany
Mariano Ronconi: “Yes, it is a different team but a strong one, they are very good. The last games against them were really great and they have been playing international hockey. They have been on tour in Europe so they are coming with more games. Fortunately, this comes when we have had two matches against Germany and after these matches we’ll have to start solving the issues that we think we need to improve before the matches against India.
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