Indian women's team has talent to be among top three in the world, says coach Paul van Ass

Rourkela: Paul van Ass had one of the toughest matches of his coaching career a few months back when the Netherlands women’s hockey team faced off against China in the final of the Paris Olympics.
The Van Ass-coached Dutch came into the summit clash as the four-time champions while for China, coached by Alyson Annan, it was their second Olympic final appearance. Despite that Annan’s side took the world No. 1 team the distance and it was finally decided via the shoot-outs which the Dutch won 3-1.
Asked whether he had expected the match to play out like it did, Van Ass promptly answered, “Totally not.”
However, the Dutchman was quick to add that the game went to the wire not only because of how well China played.
“Any opponent would have given us a hard time because we were playing against ourselves. We were fighting to get the demons out of our heads – the demons of ‘I’m not supposed to lose’, the demons of ‘Am I doing it right?’ and the demons of ‘It shouldn’t go wrong as it did in 2016 when we lost the final against England,” said Van Ass, who is in India as the coach of the UP Rudras side in the Hockey India League, in an exclusive interaction with TOI on Sunday.
In the end, the players were able to fight off the demons and grab the title. Not only the women’s team, the Netherlands men’s team, too, won the gold in Paris and it was the first time that the teams from the same country won both the Olympic title.
Van Ass, however, rued the absence of the Indian women’s team at the Olympics, the team which he believes has enough talent to be among the top three in the world.
“While they excel in individual skills, athleticism, agility and technique, ranking them among the world’s top three teams, they fall short in tactical awareness. They need to improve their decision-making when not in possession and their ability to create space and stretch the opposition when they have the ball,” he added.
The 64-year-old, who also coached the Indian men’s team for a few months in 2015, meanwhile has been more than impressed with Harmanpreet & Co after they grabbed their second successive Olympic bronze in Paris.
“The way the team has improved, some credit should go to the work done by the foreign coaches. The tactical part of Indian hockey has made huge development at least at the national level. It hasn’t progressed yet at the local level, but it will also come in due course,” he said.
“The technical part also has to improve and if they can continue in the same way over the next few years then an Olympic gold will not be far away.”