Hockey World Cup 2018: Behind China's rise, a South Korean coach groomed by an Indian at NIS Patiala

Celebrated South Korean coach Kim Sang-Ryul’s one outburst against women’s hockey players seemed to have made him unemployable in the country any longer. “I will never, ever coach a women’s team. They just do not seem to understand instructions. If the players have any questions, they do not ask them. All they do is just nod their head in agreement,” went Kim’s outburst when the South Korean women’s team coached by him made a hash of their outings in the 2004 Olympic Games at Athens. There was no stopping when Kim went ballistic. He said that the men’s hockey teams he coached asked questions when strategy was explained to them, but the women players just conveyed they understood everything and then went out and made a hash of things in the middle of the field. Kim’s angst was understandable. Four years ago, he had coached the men’s team to the Olympic silver medal — losing the final only via the penalty tie-breaker. Kim had been a transformational force in South Korean men’s hockey, winning many Asian titles and even featuring on the medals podium at the Champions Trophy and the Olympics. All this while, the Korean men’s team had been overshadowed by their women counterparts — who had been second only to Australia in World Cups and Olympics. A temperamental person, except when devising strategy for hockey teams coached by him, Kim was absolutely aghast at his wards messing things up. His comments against women hockey players caused uproar back home and his sleep that night was disrupted by a call from his agitated wife seeking explanation for the outburst. Out of the women’s coaching assignment that he anyway did not want, Kim was pondering about his future when he got a call from China, where a Korean coach of the women’s national team — Kim Chang-back — had done wonders. Motivated by the inspired hiring of Kim Chang-back, China now wanted a Korean coach for their men’s team. The flight Kim Sang-ryul took to Beijing in 2005 — to prepare their team for the 2008 Olympics — was to cause a flutter in Asian hockey. In one year, Kim instilled belief and zest in the Chinese players, who pulled off stunning upsets over India and Pakistan to advance to the final of the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, where they lost the gold-medal match to South Korea 3-1. China’s 3-2 victory over India in the preliminary league was the first in their hockey history and so was their 2-1 win over Pakistan in the semi-finals. India’s loss to China was the first step in missing qualification for the 2008 Beijing Olympics — the first time that the eight-time gold winning nation had failed to feature in the starting line-up at the Olympic Games.

Chinese hockey had marked its arrival with a style whose hallmark, in Kim’s words, remains “grit, more grit and still more grit”. What the Chinese players lacked in skills, they made up through speed and determination to stay competitive. “Chinese players know that they need to work harder than others, and never give up,” says Kim.

Kim is known to be a strategist par excellence, which he attributes to his education in India under his guru, the celebrated coach and Olympic gold medallist Balkrishan Singh. Balkrishan was member of the 1956 gold medal winning team and was the chief coach of the Indian team that won gold medal in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. It was as a coach and an instructor at National Institute of Sport (NIS) in Patiala in 1985-86 that Balkrishan imparted the lessons in hockey strategy to a young Korean answering to the name of Kim Sang-ryul. Among the proudest moments for Kim in his role as a Korean coach was to pay his “guru-dakshina” to Balkrishan by guiding the Korean team to the title in the Indira Gandhi Gold Cup in New Delhi nearly a decade later. Kim acknowledges that the Late Balkrishan Singh remains the biggest influence on his hockey coaching career. “India was where I came to learn the rudiments of coaching hockey. We Koreans were nowhere in hockey in 1985 when I personally decided to head for Patiala for a coaching course,” says Kim. “I had to dig deep into my own resources to be able to complete the programme and that NIS Diploma is still my cherished possession.” China did not even enter the men’s hockey team in the Asian Games at Jakarta this year, but Kim wants them to make a splash at the World Cup. His eyes are focused on a possible quarter-final appearance. With that professed aim, China did not do too badly by starting their campaign with a 2-2 draw against former silver medallists England on Friday night. In his decade-long stint in China, Kim has already made a mark, but is keen to have a larger pool of players. His current squad is entirely from the Inner Mongolia province . Has he not considered working with the Chinese women’s team that has done much better than the men’s squad? “The Chinese women’s team is doing very well and they have a very good coach,” says Kim. “In any case, I prefer coaching men’s squads.” For the full Hockey World Cup 2018 schedule, click here For all the results from the Hockey World Cup 2018, click here For the Hockey World Cup 2018 standings, click here To read stories from our Hockey World Cup memories series, click here To read legends’ take on Indian hockey team’s performances at the World Cup, click here To read stories from The Hockey Insider series, click here