Four teams, three automatic tickets to the Olympic Games. It is going to be a huge weekend for hockey in Valencia with Great Britain, Germany, Argentina and China battling it out for those all-important top three positions.
For all four teams, they already have the bonus of a place at the Hockey World League final later this year and all four will look to add to that with an even bigger prize on Saturday evening.
Argentina meet China in the first of the semi-finals at 4.30pm (CET) with the former side looking to repeat their 3-0 win in the group stage. Indeed, Argentina have a huge advantage in meetings between the two countries with China’s last win seven years ago during which time 12 games have been played in world level competition.
Macarena Rodriguez Perez says her side is learning quickly and this tournament has provided the perfect learning curve to improve with each game.
“The side is growing up and learning how to build towards Rio in the best form. Because we don’t now have the best player in the world [Luciana Aymar] like last year, this tournament is a really good tournament to help us prepare and grow for Rio in 2016.”
China look set to adopt a counter-attacking game once again as they aim to keep the battle close-knit and then exploit their surplus of pace up front in the form of Xhang Xiaoxue and Liang Meiyu. After an indifferent Pool A campaign, they dug out a shoot-out win against Ireland when it mattered and captain Cui Qiuxia said this was a huge moment for her team:
"This was our last shot at a place at the 2016 Olympics. We knew what we had to do."
Germany were another side to grab victory out of the fire, fighting back against Spain in the quarter-final in a shoot-out to earn a place against the more comfortable progressors Great Britain at 7pm. German skipper Janne Muller-Wieland said that they are going all guns blazing for an automatic ticket.
“GB will definitely be a tough challenge but we definitely want to beat them and not be hanging on and calculating whether we have the Olympic spot or not.”
Kate Richardson-Walsh is of a similar mind: "I know we are not going to the Olympics just yet, and we still have a job to do,”
Both sides are unbeaten so far in the tournament with GB recording five wins from five outings with four clean sheets on their record – only Canada has managed to breach their defence. Germany’s results have been more patchy with their last three games all ending in draws in regulation time. But, as Muller-Wieland said after their win against Spain in a shoot-out, German sides never go down without a fight.
The fifth to eighth place playoffs also have plenty of intrigue with nations hoping to finish as high as possible to keep alive an outside hope of potential Olympic qualification. USA play Ireland at 11.30am in a rematch of their group tie in which the latter won 2-0.
Craig Parnham will be hoping his side can produce a more effective corner routine as they spurned eight set pieces. Ireland have similar concerns after 15 of their corners went unconverted against China in their quarter-final.
If they can counter-attack like they did in the first meeting with Megan Frazer to the fore, this could be a fascinating encounter.
Spain will carry the favourite’s tag against South Africa in the other tie following a week of strong performances but they will need to quickly recover from their shoot-out loss to Germany. The Spaniards have been hugely competitive, beating Canada and China and drawing with Argentina and the Germans, in normal time, with their speed and work rate a real factor.
South Africa are still searching for a first win of the campaign and need to find a scoring touch having netted just three times so far. The ninth and tenth place playoff is on Friday evening with Uruguay playing Canada in an all Pan-American battle.
