From champions to catching up

Pakistan arrived at the World Cup carrying a record that no other country in the tournament can claim. Four titles, more than anyone else. But by the time their third group match ended against India, that history had done little to change what happened on the pitch. There had been no win in three matches. Pakistan began with a defeat against England, recovered to draw with Wales and then lost 5-3 to India. There were periods when the team looked competitive, particularly against Wales and India. There were goals, attacking runs and passages of play that offered glimpses of the Pakistan side that had fought its way back to the World Cup after missing the previous edition. But those periods did not last long enough. For Touseeq Arshad, who was only 17 when he represented Pakistan at the 2012 London Olympics, the result needs to be looked at against where the team stands today rather than where it once stood. "If we see realistically, Pakistan didn't go to win the World Cup or the Pro League. This is the reality," he says. "There is a big difference in the rankings now. The first target should be that Pakistan at least comes in the top eight teams in the world. After that, it will take two or three years before Pakistan can start finishing on the victory stand, if this setup continues." It is a striking assessment for a country that still sits at the top of the World Cup's historical roll of honour, winning the tournament in 1971, 1978, 1982 and 1994. The fourth title remains the last, and more than three decades later, the conversation around Pakistan hockey is no longer about when a fifth might arrive. It is about how to get back a fighting chance. Former Pakistan goalkeeper and coach Imran Butt saw the problem at this World Cup much closer to the pitch. "We do not have a defensive structure. We do not have a midfield. There is no creative person in the midfield who can create chances," he says. "We have good attackers, but we will only utilise them when we have a defensive structure." The three matches offered different opponents and different scorelines, but the outcome was the same: Pakistan were out before the next stage. For a team returning to the World Cup after an eight-year absence, qualification itself had marked a step back onto the biggest stage. What followed, however, was also a reminder of how much ground had been lost while Pakistan was away. The game moved on Individual skill has never been difficult to find in Pakistan hockey. The problem, Imran believes, is what happens around it. Against England, Wales and India, Pakistan scored seven goals, but conceded 12. For Imran, who spent much of his playing career looking at the game from the goalmouth, those numbers cannot simply be put down to the goalkeeper or a defender making a mistake. He sees a side that is still missing the structure needed to defend as a unit and then build from the back. The problems were also visible when the team had the ball. Imran points to a lack of control in midfield, chances that were created but not properly developed, and players struggling to read situations as they changed during a match. "Our issue is that we are an unpredictable team. We can do anything at any time," he says. "We are not able to read the situation. We play hockey without using our mind. The other teams create things and make decisions together." That unpredictability has long been romanticised as part of Pakistan hockey. A player can produce a piece of skill from nowhere, an attack can suddenly open up and, for a few minutes, the team can seem capable of troubling almost anyone. At this World Cup too, those moments were there. The problem was what happened in between them. "We are not team players. That is our major issue," Imran says. Touseeq sees it from a slightly different angle. Pakistan's traditional attacking game and individual ability have not disappeared, he says, but the space in which those skills once flourished has. European teams press much more aggressively now. They close down space quickly and leave fewer gaps for a player to take on an opponent. That changes what is required from the team in possession. "Individual skill is shown when the other team gives you a gap," Touseeq says. "Those things will gradually improve with ball possession, build-up and outletting. The more ball possession you have, the more the team will dominate." For him, possession is not simply about controlling the game. It also determines how much energy players have left when the match reaches its final stages. Chasing the ball for long periods eventually takes its toll, particularly in the third and fourth quarters. That became important because Pakistan did not look completely out of place throughout the tournament. There were stretches against Wales and India when they attacked well and competed with the opposition. Touseeq describes it as playing "very well in patches". It is the patches that remain the problem. Modern international hockey gives teams little room to disappear from a match and then find their way back into it. The leading sides press together, defend together and know how they want to move the ball before an individual player is forced to invent something. Pakistan can still produce the invention. What they have struggled to produce is everything around it. The excuse that expired For years, Pakistan hockey’s decline has been explained through the change in the surface beneath the players’ feet. The argument is familiar. Pakistan learnt its hockey on grass, where individual skill, dribbling and close control helped make the team one of the most successful in the world. As international hockey moved to artificial turf and became quicker, Pakistan was left behind. Imran does not buy that explanation anymore. “There is no such thing,” he says. “We won the World Cup in 1994. There was artificial turf then as well.” For him, the surface is an easy explanation for a problem that runs much deeper. Pakistan had time to adapt. What it failed to build was a system that could continue producing players, coaches and teams as the game around them changed. There were attempts along the way. Foreign coaches were brought in and academies were established, but Imran believes the problem was never simply finding someone with the right ideas. It was allowing those ideas enough time to take root. “We got good foreign coaches,” he says. “But they were not allowed to build a team. The academies we built to strengthen the basics needed development coaches who could guide our coaches and build a structure.” Touseeq's assessment is even harder on what happened during those years. Pakistan, he points out, remains a four-time world champion, but while other countries were developing their hockey, Pakistan continued to fall behind. “The countries that learnt to play from Pakistan developed themselves,” he says. “They worked with continuity and consistency and made their infrastructure.” That continuity matters because building an international team takes years, not a few camps before a major tournament. Coaches need time with players, younger players need a pathway into the senior side and the system needs to survive beyond one poor tournament or a change in administration. “Unfortunately, Pakistan has not done anything in the last two decades,” Touseeq says. Artificial turf may once have changed the kind of hockey Pakistan had to play. But more than three decades after the country's last World Cup title, it can hardly explain why the gap remains. The system behind the shirt The gap becomes wider long before a Pakistani player walks onto the pitch at a World Cup. Touseeq points towards the amount of hockey a player in Europe is exposed to before reaching that level. Domestic leagues run regularly, international matches are part of the calendar and players continue working within the same system between major tournaments. The people responsible for developing them are also given time. “European teams play international matches for six or seven months a year. Their league infrastructure and domestic development continues with continuity,” he says. “The federations and coaches do not keep changing. They have professional people and they are given a task for at least four years.” Four years, he argues, is enough time to do more than prepare a team for the next tournament. It allows coaches to develop a larger pool of players, identify where they are lacking and work with the same group over a longer period. Around them are physical trainers, assistant coaches and video analysts, each working as part of the same setup. Pakistan has rarely had that luxury. Imran remembers a domestic system where returning from a national tour did not mean waiting for the next Pakistan camp. Players went back to their departments and into another competition. “Earlier, when you came back from a national team tour, the coaches of the departments were standing there and you went straight into domestic tournaments,” he says. That regular competition served another purpose. Players arriving in the national team had already spent years being tested at different levels. Imran believes that pathway has weakened. Players can now be picked from clubs and reach the national setup, still requiring the kind of development that should have happened before they got there. By the time they begin settling into international hockey, valuable years have already been lost. The same problem exists on the other side of the touchline. Imran says national camps are held, but questions whether the coaching around them has developed at the same pace as the game. Coaches, he argues, need regular professional courses and a wider support system rather than simply being appointed when a national camp begins. “You should have an elite coaching team,” he says. “They should have awareness and they should work with the coaches who are already working with these players at their clubs.” Then there is the question of what waits for a player away from the pitch. Touseeq does not believe Pakistan has stopped producing talent. He talks about the need for better fitness and nutrition, but adds something more basic: financial freedom. For a player trying to compete against professionals developed in better-funded systems, uncertainty over earning a living becomes part of the preparation too. His response is to ask a question of his own. “Ask the Pakistan Hockey Federation how many of these players who are playing the World Cup have jobs,” he says. “They are representing Pakistan at the top level.” For decades, departmental teams gave many Pakistani athletes employment alongside competitive sport. With that system greatly diminished, Touseeq believes the domestic mechanism that once supported hockey players has also been damaged. Imran makes a similar point when talking about what might persuade the next generation to stay with the sport. Other sports, he says, offer incentives, contracts and some idea of what a career might look like. In hockey, neither a young player nor a coach can be certain what waits ahead. “You don't know about the future of the players here. You don't know about the future of the coaches here,” he says. It leaves Pakistan trying to solve problems at national camps that stronger hockey systems begin addressing years earlier. Imran's prescription is not particularly complicated: more domestic tournaments, functioning academies and properly prepared coaches working within the same development structure. Touseeq comes back to the same thing from another direction — give a setup time, build a pool of players and stop starting again whenever results go wrong. Because by the time a player pulls on a Pakistan shirt at a World Cup, the question is no longer how talented he is. It is whether everything that happened before he got there prepared him for the level at which he is now being asked to play. The weight of past wins Four World Cup titles still place Pakistan above every other country in the tournament’s history. But those trophies also make the present harder to ignore. The players who faced England, Wales and India were carrying a legacy built long before most of them were born. They cannot recreate 1971, 1978, 1982 or 1994. Nor are the teams standing opposite them playing the same hockey that Pakistan once dominated. For Touseeq, the way back cannot begin with expecting another World Cup trophy. He believes Pakistan must first return to the top eight and then, if the same setup is allowed to continue, work towards competing for podium finishes over the next few years. That may sound like a modest target for a four-time world champion, but Pakistan’s three matches at this World Cup showed why the distance has to be measured differently now. The four titles are not going anywhere. Neither is the history attached to them. But Pakistan can no longer compete with the teams that won those trophies. It has to build one capable of competing with the teams playing today.