Speedy Tigers head coach Sarjit Singh cautioned his players to ‘wake up’ from the missed opportunity of pulling off a sensational win over Pakistan on Saturday, as they gear up for the encounter against Canada in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup tonight.
The Canadians suffered a 7-1 defeat against Paris Olympics-bound New Zealand, ranked World No 10, in the tournament’s opening match on Saturday evening.
Sarjit reckons the Canadians will bounce back strongly to redeem their pride against Malaysia.
“It is not a matter of scoring more goals against Canada. We are going to step on the pitch, give a good performance and enjoy the game. There is no such thing as if a team loses 7-1 today, the next day they are going to lose by a 9-0 margin.
“In fact, the Canadians will come hard on us because they had a bad score. They need the points too and will definitely make things difficult for us,” said Sarjit at a post-match press conference.
Reminiscing about the match against the Pakistanis which saw the ray of hope on the way to winning short-lived, Sarjit said there is a grand lesson to learn from that 4-5 defeat against the former World and Olympic champions.
“Whenever you make a mistake, you are surely going to be punished for it. We had the chance to seal the game at 4-3 and we made two silly errors. We started playing to the crowd in the last three to five minutes and that saw the team going down and down.”
“If we had just held on to the game, we would have been fine. But it’s OK. It was our first game and we learned a bitter lesson from this and hopefully we will get better and better, starting with today’s match against Canada,” said Sarjit.
He added that the Speedy Tigers must learn to control the game against Canada and plan every move.
“We must learn to control the match. There was no hurry because time was on our side against Pakistan. That’s what Pakistan did towards the end the match and won the game.
“Anybody can make such mistakes. It is a good learning process for us as it has happened to us now. We have a long way to go as our target is the 2026 Asian Games.
