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Indian hockey team is preparing for the World Cup next year at Pune as Spanish mentor Jose Brasa Teaches Hockey Basics to the Indian hockey players.
The renowned Spaniard is teaching all those things from the scratch to revive the hockey glory in India. He is stressing on the basic things.
Jose Brasa says, "The boys have the ability to score goals. So I have to worry about simpler things."
"The tough part is to teach them the basics," the celebrated Spanish coach explains.
According to the coach, the Indian Team have lost the touch of the game only and they can adopt it quickly as they are the former Olympic and World Champions.
"Yes, hockey is a game of basics. Things like running with the ball, passing, stopping, defending etc require a simple, basic technique. Sadly, quite a few of the Indian players are not very sound in this aspect," he adds.
Encouraging the guys he sometimes roars in a half-hindi accent: "Upar dekho!"
He clarifies that for hockey you have to be with the ball maintaining your speed as well.
"Funnily, the players are very good at the difficult things," says Brasa.
However, he wants the Indians to step out of the mindset that hockey doesn’t have much value like that of cricket and adopt a different approach.
He adds saying that, "Get the ball and pass it with a maximum of two touches."
Barsa is adopting new methods in hockey as well as sticking to the strength of the team.
"We are doing things that we have not done before. In the past, we knew only zonal marking but now the focus is on man-toman . We are trying to adapt," says striker Tushar Khandeker.
"Every player is taking the innovations with a lot of spirit. The entire team is excited about the new training regime. He's very different and better than our foreign coaches from the past," says drag-flick expert Sandeep Singh.
Ignace Tirkey the senior midfielder added, "We feel we are back in school. It's as if he's imparting training to kids.But we don't mind it at all. We have begun to realise that we played hockey the wrong way."
