Japan and South Korea will look to put behind their respective semifinal setbacks and want to finish on a high.
Japan and South Korea will look to put behind their respective semifinal setbacks and want to finish on a high. Both teams will square off in the third-place play-off match in the Asian Champions Trophy on Saturday. Both Japan and South Korea will enter the game after suffering heavy defeats. Japan lost 5-0 to India and Korea lost 6-2 to Malaysia.
Japan barely had a sniff against the host with just a solitary effort on goal. In contrast, India had 18 which led to 4 goals. Despite the loss, Japan’s coach felt his team can bounce back against Korea to take third place. “I am disappointed but India is a strong team,” said Akira Takahashi. “Our target is the Asian Games with the same group of players. We will have to come up with another structure for the Asian Games.” The Japanese team will be much more confident facing a relatively older Korean contingent.
Korea put in a real fight in the loss to Malaysia, where it went ahead in the opening minute before equalising the scores at 2-2 at the end of the first quarter. While down at 4-2, Korea had the chance to pull one back from a penalty stroke but Jihun Yang failed to convert. Malaysia punished Korea further in the final quarter with two more goals. Korea will feel confident in overcoming Japan having beaten them 2-1 twice this year already, after having gone a goal behind in the World Cup and the Asian Champions Trophy. Korea will be wary of exposing its left side of the defence which Japan repeatedly targeted in the opening game of the tournament between the two sides.
The Asian Champions Trophy 2023 is being conducted in two phases – a group stage where all six teams play each other in a single-legged round-robin format followed by the knockout/classification stage. After the group stage is over, the top four teams make the semi-finals while the bottom two play in the fifth-place classification match. The two semi-final winners move on to the final on August 12 while the two losing teams play each other in the third-place playoff match. The Indian men’s hockey team ranked fourth in the world, and world No. 16 Pakistan are the joint most-successful teams at the Asian Champions Trophy with three titles each. South Korea defeated Japan to win the last edition of the Asian Champions Trophy hockey hosted by Bangladesh in 2021.
| Schedule (12.08.23) | Timings (IST) |
| Japan vs South Korea | 6:00 |
| India vs Malaysia | 8:30 |
The 2023 Asian Champions Trophy for Mens starts on 3 August and ends on 12 August 2023.
Live streaming of the Asian Champions Trophy 2023 will happen on FanCode. Live broadcasts of the matches of the Asian Champions Trophy will be available on the Star Sports First and Star Sports Select 2 HD TV channels in India.
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