Junior Men’s Hockey World Cup: Netherlands Register Thumping Victory Over Korea

Formidable Netherlands registered an emphatic 12-5 victory over a struggling Korea in a Pool C game of the Odisha Hockey Men's Junior World Cup at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.

Miles Bukkens was the star of the match for the Oranges scoring as many as five goals (13th, 16th, 36th,58th and 60th minutes) including a hat-trick. Casper Van Der Veen also scored another hat-trick by scoring in the 18th, 26th and 53rd minutes respectively. Other goal scorers for the winning team were Sheldon Schouten (10th), Olivier Hortensius (24th), Brent Van Bijnen (35th, 49th) and Silas Lageman (41st).

For Korea, Seong Jun Jeong (7th, 14th, 48th) also struck a hat-trick. Ho Seung Yoo (41st) and Hyunwoo Kim (19th) scored one goal each, but these were not enough to pose any challenge to the mighty opponents.

Though Korea players started well in the first quarter by scoring two goals in quick succession, they lost momentum thereafter and never came back into the match. They showed some promise in the last two quarters in patches, but it was inconsistent.

“It was a great learning curve for us. We will try to improve our performance in our next matches,” said Korean coach Jongyi Kim.

On the other hand, Netherlands captain Silas Lageman said they didn’t consider Korea as a weaker opponent and were well prepared for the match.

“We are pretty much satisfied with our penalty conversion on today. We want to carry forward the momentum in the tournament. Reaching the final will be a realistic target for us,” said Lageman.