June 27, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 22, 1429

ROTTERDAM (Netherlands), June 26: Spain trumped Argentina 2-1 in the men’s field hockey Champions Trophy here Wednesday.

Facundo Callioni scrambled in a rebound of his own shot for Argentina to lead after five minutes.

Argentina’s tight midfield marking prevented Spain getting shots on goal until Santiago Freixa broke through on the right, dived and drove into the top of goal from an acute angle for the equaliser.

Argentina found gaps in Spain’s midfield to force a penalty corner early in the second half but Matias Rey’s flick was deflected out.

Freixa converted Spain’s second penalty corner, a low flick along the pitch inside the right post early in the second half which provided the 2-1 winning margin for Spain.

Spain shut down the midfield and prevented any further scoring chances for Argentina in the second half while peppering Argentina’s goal with shots from Eduard Tubau, Freixa and Ramon Alegre in the last 10 minutes.

The victory was Spain’s first over Argentina in the three Champions Trophy Tournaments in which they have participated.

“It is always an emotional match when Spain plays Argentina with a lot of emotion on the pitch, especially from Argentina,” said Spain coach Maurits Hendriks.

“We should have closed out the match much earlier with the opportunities we had to score in the first half.

“Argentina have surprised a good number of teams in this tournament [beating Australia 2-1, Netherlands 1-0 and drawing 2-2 with Germany] and with results like that we knew we had to take Argentina very seriously,” Hendriks said.

Argentina coach Carlos Retegui added: “Spain are a very structured team and hard to play against which is why we enjoy playing them.

“It was a very close game as it always is when Spain and Argentina play and we tried very hard in the second half to win by playing a risky 3-3-1 combination to get a goal,” Retegui said.

“Although we tried very hard the ball would just not go into goal for us.”

Round four will be completed after Australia play Germany and South Korea take on the Netherlands next.—AFP