India coach Janneke Schopman on Friday said her team played its best, fought bravely and dominated the entire game but was unlucky not to score a goal as it went down 0-1 to Japan in the women's FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers and missed a chance to make it to the Paris Olympic Games to be held later this year.
India conceded an early goal to Japan off a penalty corner and then could not score despite dominating the entire match, making nearly a dozen circle entries, taking 11 shots at the goal and earning nine penalty corners as compared to four by their opponents.
Schopman said her team was ready physically and mentally for the match despite a heartbreaking 4-3 defeat to Germany in a sudden-death shoot-out in the semifinal on Thursday.
Within 24 hours, they were back on the turf and played another thriller.
"I think they were ready. We didn't start well defensively and sometimes you know it can happen. But again, what I see is a team that fought back and look, we dominated the entire game. After such domination, we should have scored a goal and we didn't," said Schopman.
The result was that Schopman's Indian team failed to qualify for their successive Olympic Games while Japan made it to their sixth.
Asked what was the reason for India's failure to score a goal against Japan, Schopman said she did not have any answer for that.
"If I knew the answer for why we didn't (score), then I wouldn't be standing here. Probably because then I would have given them that answer during the game. And the only thing I can say is they were trying, they were fighting, they were trying.
"If you look at the match, we probably haven't played this dominant against Japan in the last three games we played against them. But this time we didn't score and the other games we scored and they didn't," said the 46-year-old coach, a former Olympic Games medallist for the Netherlands.
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