India women’s hockey team coach Sjoerd Marijne believes his players’ biggest takeaway from their impressive FIH World Cup campaign is the belief that they can compete with the best teams.
India women head to the Asian Games 2026 fresh from their best Hockey World Cup finish in 52 years with fifth place. It is a result Marijne believes has given the team something that encouragement from a coach alone could not provide – first-hand evidence that they belong among the elite.
“I can tell them many times, ‘Okay, we are a good team, you can do it,’ but they have to experience it themselves,” Marijne told Olympics.com.
“Now they played against the best teams in the world, and they have experienced that they can match up with them, and sometimes even beat them, like Germany, who I really rank as a top-four team.”
Germany was ranked fifth when the Hockey World Cup was underway while India were ninth. India beat them in the classification match to finish fifth in the tournament.
Marijne admitted there has been little time to reflect on the significance of India’s Hockey World Cup performance, with another major assignment already on the horizon.
“Sometimes you would like to have a little bit more time to really realise what happened because when you’re in the moment, you don’t always realise,” he said.
“But it’s the way it is, and we need to focus now on the Asian Games. Of course, it feels really good coming back with that position, and that gives a lot of confidence to the team.”
The Asian Games will also offer the Indian women’s hockey team an opportunity to secure direct qualification for the LA 2028 Olympics by winning the gold medal.
Marijne, however, is wary of allowing the stakes to distract his players from the immediate task.
The People’s Republic of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea would be among India’s major rivals in Aichi-Nagoya, and the Dutch coach wants his side to approach the competition one match at a time.
“For us, it’s about ourselves. Focus on our own performance and doing that well,” Marijne said.
Asked what his message would be to the players if they won the Asian Games gold, Marijne refused to entertain the hypothetical.
“I don’t believe in ‘if’. I’m sorry, I know you want to have an answer, but I’m not going to jinx things,” Marijne asserted. “I have respect for our opponents.”
That approach is consistent with Marijne’s broader coaching philosophy of concentrating on controllable factors rather than results.
“Outcomes like, ‘Oh, if we win this’ or ‘if we lose that one,’ that creates stress,” he explained. “But if I’m busy like, ‘Okay, what do the girls at this moment need from me?’ that brings me back to what I can control.”
While Marijne is reluctant to look too far ahead, he has no concerns about the ambition within his squad.
India’s players were not entirely satisfied even with their historic World Cup finish, and Marijne believes that hunger allows him to continually raise expectations within the group.
“They’re hungry for more, and I think that is the spirit you need to have if you are acting on the highest level,” he said. “I like that mindset very much because that means that I also can set the benchmark higher and higher.”
For now, however, that benchmark starts not with an Asian Games final or an Olympic quota, but with the opening game against Uzbekistan.
“I’m trying to focus on the here and now and on my task,” Marijne said.
READ MORE: https://www.olympics.com/en/news/sjoerd-marijne-india-women-hockey-world-cup-asian-games-2026
