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by Bruce Hamilton
Argentina eased past USA 9-1 to take second place in the tournament on goal difference at the end of the first day of the men’s Olympic qualifying tournament in Auckland on Saturday.
New Zealand leads the table with 12 goals for and none against and Ireland holds third place on goal differences with 4 goals from its 4-0 win over France earlier Saturday.
All Argentina’s goals came from the field despite 6 penalty corner attempts. Argentina’s penalty corner specialist Pedro Ibarra was not on the team roster today which may account for the poor conversion rate of penalty corners.
Argentina had not trouble penetrating the USA defence in the first half and took a 4 goal lead into the break with goals by Juan Garreta, Mario Almada and two goals to Lucas Vila.
Mario Almada added two more goals in the second half and Lucas Vila added another to be joined by goals by Matias Vila, Lucas Rossi and Fernando Zylberberg.
With Argentina's 9th goal in the net and less than a minute to play, USA forced its way into Argentina’s circle and Nate Coolidge scored a consolation goal to embarrass Argentina.
Sergio Vigil, Argentina’s coach, was pleased he had 2 months to prepare the team for the tournament as most of Argentina’s players are contracted to European clubs and are not in competitions during Europe’s winter.
“We had 2 months to train together in Argentina so I am happy with the team’s preparation,” Vigil said.
Argentina plays Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday and Vigil had high praise for Kwandwane Browne, captain of Trinidad and Tobago. “Kwandwane is the best player in the world today for me. He is an incredible player,” Vigil said.
“”Trinidad and Tobago is a very young team and with not much experience in world hockey but they have some very good players,” Vigil said.
Nick Conway, USA coach, has high expectations for his team.
“To play in the third/fourth playoff in this tournament will be great and anything less than that will be disappointing for us,” Conway said.
“We feel we have the ability to compete for that result but today we did not play attacking hockey the way we can,” Conway said.
“We need to learn how to be successful at this level and we need to learn that when the umpire blows the whistle if you stand still for two seconds you are going to concede goals. That is a lesson we learned pretty hard today. We have to learn and we have to learn overnight,” Conway said.
“I have no doubt that we will improve and that by the end of this tournament we will be competing,” Conway added.
USA play France on Sunday and Conway believes the pressure is all on France.
“They will be very disappointed with today’s result and the pressure is on them so they will be looking to come at us. With the pressure on them we have to use that to our advantage,” Conway said, “if we can get a result tomorrow it will completely shift the momentum of where we are at and we are capable of getting a result."
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