AGENCIES
VASCO
John Hackworth led his USA side to a 4-0 win over India in the AIFF Youth Cup on Thursday but despite the comfortable margin of victory, the head coach believes his team were fortunate and that the hosts were quite impressive.
"I think India came into this game with a good game plan and we were lucky to get the goals we got. India were very good and in the first 30 minutes they were taking away what we wanted to do and that was frustrating us. After that, we thought we have to serve balls not just from the sides but directly into the box and with the first one we did, we got a goal and that unlocked a lot of doors for us," he said after the game. "It’s a bit of a crazy tournament and there’s a lot yet to be done," he added.
Hackworth admitted that rotating his side does help in a tournament of this nature. "We have a tournament which has five games in a concise period of time and you need to rotate your players. I don’t think there are any players who can play five games in this heat and humidity," he said.
"Plus, our main goal is player development. We want to give everyone in our roster some time to play and that’s what these games are for," he added.
The USA coach was full of praise for the Indian side when asked on which aspect he thought they could improve on.
"I’m very complimentary of that team. They’re organized, they’re disciplined and they’re very hard to play against. Their flanks were slightly unbalanced and that was good for us. This is the third game that I’ve seen them and I’ve rotated rosters in the second game itself so that isn’t really an even evaluation of the players and staff," he opined.
Hackworth also touched upon his side's preparations for their next game against Korea Republic. "We watched them a couple of times now. All the games are coming thick and fast now so we’ll have to evaluate what happens," he concluded.
