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Planet Field Hockey

This year several big world events will be played in a new FIH-sposored formula. Both women's and men's Junior World Cup and qualifiers' participants will be split into 4 pools, each one consisting of four teams. The FIH Executive Board is going to decide whether 2002 World Cups will be held the same way as well. The other option is more "traditional" one - 2x8 format with every team playing 7 matches in round robin and 2 in the semifinal and final phase.

To those who do not feel knowledgeable about the history of hockey, I will remind you that today's discussed 4x4 format was abandoned after the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome due to its partiality and unjustice. Since then in every FIH event both at the Olympic Games and the World Cups the participants have been divided into two pools.

Here I would like to give you several reasons I think the new system will neither strenghten the world hockey nor make the World Cup events more attractive:

1. The main idea of 4x4 format is that after three matches half of the teams are eliminated which means the best they can do is 9th place. For such teams like Canada, Argentina, Poland or Malaysia the main aim is to find itself among the 6 or 8 best teams. If they are out just after 3 matches their competitive motivations will be less then weak. In Rome (1960), where the 4x4 format was used for the last time, two teams (Poland and Denmark) even withdrew. Their olympic committees did not see any reason to fight for respectively 9th and 13th place.

Now, if FIH decides to make a soccer-style competition, we will have 8 unhappy teams playing for 9-16 places and the final competition of the best eight teams automatically turns into another (and a bit bigger) Champions Trophy. Shall we agree that two elite tournaments the same year is a bit too much?

2. According to what was said above, hockey invented its own way to hold the biggest tournaments. Two pools guarantees each team it won't be eliminated and almost always have its chance to get higher in the final standings. Do you remember unforgettable Sydney olympics? Argentina finished 8th, Poland was last, but if these two squads gained just two points more, they could have found themselves in the "medal zone". The two pool system guarantees in the situations like this that every match played in the round robin can be vital.

3. Now at first glance at the agenda of Edinburgh qualifier we can openly forsee which match in every pool will be the most important one. Can someone believe India will lose any point in the first round, playing against Egypt, Wales and USA? At the same time we can imagine the Americans, where men's hockey didn't achieve any successes last time, can have serious problems with gaining any points. In this circumstances only one match (Egypt – Wales) will decide who is going to take part in the World Cup.

4. There is another danger in 4x4 format as well. Nothing bad will happen if the quarterfinal participants will be let's say Holland, Germany, Korea, Pakistan, England, Australia, India and somebody else. But what if some of the best teams are out after the first phase. And only one match can decide it. Can we imagine let's say Korea being well motivated to fight for the 9-16 places and its world class players playing most of the tournament being aware the next chance of winning the World Cup will be in 2006? What will FIH people do if one of the eliminated teams is the host Malaysia? Are they conscious how much interest the World Cup will lose? This is the problem football giant FIFA always had when soccer World Cup competitions were held – what to do not to loose the host team? They couldn't of course follow the hockey way. The number of teams taking part in football World Cups is twice the size.

5. Soccer gives us another example to describe how unjust and dangerous a group consisting of 4 teams can be. This is FIFA's problem as well, and so far they do not know how to deal with it. Imagine the situation like this. There are two favourite teams in a pool. Let's call it A and B. This are followed by a weaker ones (C and D). The first two rounds results are as follows: A beats B and C, and two other matches D-C, D-B end with draws. The standings before the last round is as follows.

1. A team 6 points
2. D team 2 points
3. B team 1 points
4. C team 1 points

The A team is now MATHEMATICALLY SURE it will remain the first even if losing the last game! It can only let D win and eliminate that way B, if it's considered more dangerous. That's how one good team can get rid of a strong opponent. B can only wait for the A-D result. Even 100:0 victory will not help them if A decides to throw the game.

Is this just a theory? Not exactly. It was what happened twice at the 1998 soccer World Cup with Norway "sensationally" beating Brazil 2:1 in the last game and Nigeria losing to Paraguay 1:3. That's how Spain and Morocco, despite playing more effective and playing better football, were knocked out of the competition.

In football they cannot avoid the situation. The 32 teams taking part in the World Cup cannot be divided in any other way but into 8 pools of 4. Hockey however with 16 teams playing gives us opportunity to avoid it quite efectively. Of course I'm not saying a situation like this is not possible within the 2x8 formula, but its consequences are not so automatically dangerous.

6. Another reason against the FIH proposed change is that the 2x8 format seems to be more ... democratic. Even the weakest team playing in the World Cup has opportunity to play against two of the four World best teams. Let's imagine Cuba, who will play in the World Cup finals for the first time. Is there any other opportunity for them to play let's say both against Holland and Pakistan at the same tournament? If we let the World Cup participants be shared into four groups, the Cubans and other teams who are not the favourites will play one match against some of the best, and most of the tournament they will play with the teams which are expected to be at their level.

7. The final conclusion is that we will see the whole absurd of 4x4 format this year at the World Cup qualifier in Edinburgh. In theory, the tournament will last 13 days. In practice it will end after first 5 days. When the first round is over we will know the names of 8 teams who are sure they WILL NOT GO TO MALAYSIA and they have nothing to play for. Those who are first or second in their groups will be ALMOST SURE they have qualified. Their only aim will be not to be the 8th.

* * *

Despite the arguments I have given I'm sure the idea of 4x4 will prevail anyway.

I have read somewhere that FIH has not yet taken the decision (oficially it has to be announced after the Edinburgh qualifier) and only the Malaysians are still trying to fight for 2x8 format and make sure they will have something to play for after the first games ... The FIH concept embraces the whole idea of changes, but is it really something good for hockey?

Jakub R. Kumoch

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