Big trouble in China

Hockey is a sport where hierarchies are pretty strict and there are rarely any surprises when national teams play.

Today in Tallinn Netherlands certainly played a game that will go down in the history of the Oranje team. Playing a game with great attention in defense and making the most of the mistakes of the opponents - the Netherlands scored 7 goals in 16 shots on goal - the Dutch earned 3 fundamental points, the first three in the tournament, to reach the goal of staying in Division 1b. On the contrary, China, undefeated until today, can abandon dreams of promotion, after playing a bad match, lacking determination and punctuated by many individual mistakes, which allowed the Dutch to take a 4-0 lead before theChinese managed to score the first goal. The change of goalkeeper after two periods hasn't brought big changes, nor are the two goalies particularly guilty of the goals conceded. China must reflect on the absolute lack of grit and concentration, probably the Chinese are already certain of victory on the ice. Having conceded 7 goals to a team that had so few shots on goal, three of which on very naive individual errors, is certainly a sign of a mental problem rather than strength on the ice, given that China is undoubtedly stronger in terms of roster .

Now it will be interesting to see how the Chinese continue the tournament, apparently with no more goals to pursue. The Netherlands, on the other hand, takes a big and unexpected step forward towards permanence, waiting for the decisive match against Serbia with very high moral

Tweets by @eurohockey