Sports: USA chances of avoiding relegation dented; Spain beat young Germany in FIH Pro League

The USA women’s task of avoiding relegation from the FIH Hockey Pro League has become  much tougher after going down 0-4 to Belgium at the final mini-tournament of the season in Antwerp on Sunday. The Americans, who are currently bottom of the table, now have just two matches remaining needing to earn the three points with the necessary goal difference to ensure their survival ahead of New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the victory for Belgium means their quest for second spot behind the already crowned champions, the Netherlands, continues. Earlier in the day, Spain’s men were put through their paces by a determined young German side looking to make its mark, but the Red Sticks ground out a 3-1 victory in the end.

With any hopes of a top-three spot in the FIH Hockey Pro League long gone, Germany took the opportunity to blood a team of up-and-coming players – an under-21 side with only 21 senior caps between them taking to the pitch. The youngsters gave a good account of themselves, creating chances while also being particularly impressive in defence.

Leading the way was 20-year-old keeper Joshua Onyekwue Nnaji who did exceptionally well on debut to deny the Spanish on numerous occasions. He was finally beaten in the fourth quarter. After Joaquin Menini brought the ball into the circle along the baseline, a goalmouth scramble resulted in Alvaro Iglesias popping it in to take the lead. The Germans responded almost immediately with Leon Lindemann floating the ball through for Florian Sperling to fire in the equaliser with a sensational strike.

A reworked penalty corner culminated in Rafael Vilallonga finding the back of the net for Spain with just under three minutes left in the match. With the Red Sticks now taking control of proceedings, another goal followed soon after, Enrique Gonzalez on the end of a lovely team effort to seal the 3-1 victory.

Germany’s Joshua Onyekwue Nnaji was named Player of the Match and said: “I’m just happy with the match, for our team – we had an amazing performance. We are the under-21 guys playing against the senior squad of Spain so I think we performed very well.”

In the women’s game, Belgium struck off their first penalty corner of the match – a great flick from Stephanie Vanden Borre putting the home team in front. They added to that tally in the second quarter. A cross in from Astrid Bonami found Delphine Marien whose reverse stick deflection doubled the Belgians’ lead.

While the Americans fought hard throughout, Belgium were rarely troubled, facing no penalty corners during the match. The home side upped the intensity in the final quarter. Vanden Borre drilled in her second goal of the night off another penalty corner, and Charlotte Englebert slotted in the Belgians’ fourth off a penalty stroke to wrap up the 4-0 win. The victory means the home team have leapfrogged Germany into fourth place on 27 points with two matches remaining.

Stephanie Vanden Borre was named Player of the Match and said: “We started a bit sloppy, we didn’t give the energy we had in the game yesterday. We just needed to put more energy into every sprint we needed to do but that’s not what we did so I think that’s the thing we need to take from this game for the next game.”