It started with such promise. India pressed high, moved the ball with purpose, and in the dying moments of the first quarter, earned a golden chance — a penalty stroke — to draw first blood in front of their home crowd at the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium. Captain Harmanpreet Singh stepped up. The stadium held its breath.
Tomas Santiago saved it.
What followed in the next 46 minutes was the kind of collapse that leaves coaches speechless and fans staring at the scoreboard in disbelief. By the time the final hooter sounded, Argentina had put eight goals past India without reply, handing the Men in Blue one of the most humiliating defeats in their recent history. India 0, Argentina 8. It wasn’t just a loss. It was a reckoning.
The Avalanche
The moment Harmanpreet’s stroke was saved, something shifted. Argentina sensed it before India could recover. Within sixty seconds, Tomas Ruiz unleashed a ferocious tomahawk from outside the circle in the 14th minute to open the scoring. A minute later, Tomas Domene slipped a composed finish past goalkeeper Suraj Karkera. Just like that, India were 2 goals down, and they had never really been behind.
The second quarter became a nightmare of a different magnitude. Domene tripled the lead with a composed finish in the 20th minute, and Lucio Mendez added a fourth just two minutes later. Ignacio Ibarra rifled his shot from a tight angle to score a fifth in the 25th minute, while Domene completed his hat-trick soon after. Nicolas della Torre also got on the scoresheet in the 30th minute, closing out the first half with a 7-0 lead for Argentina.
Seven goals in sixteen minutes. In their own backyard. In front of their own fans.
India had conceded a collective collapse of defending, communication, and composure all at once. Missed assignments, unattended back passes and a back line that simply had no answer to Argentina’s clinical movement inside the circle — it was everything that can go wrong, going wrong at the same time.
The Context: A Campaign Already Under Pressure
This was not just the story of one bad night. It was India’s second straight defeat, having lost 3-1 to world No. 2 Belgium in their campaign opener on Wednesday. A team that had entered the Rourkela leg hoping to set a positive tone for their season found themselves winless in two, with no points on the board and a goal difference of minus ten.
The FIH Men’s Pro League 2025-26 is not merely a prestige competition. The season holds added significance, with the winners securing direct qualification for the LA 2028 Olympics. For India, every point dropped this early tightens the window considerably. And with two difficult previous Pro League seasons (finishing 7th in 2023-24 and 9th in 2024-25), narrowly avoiding relegation, the pressure to perform at home was already palpable before a ball was struck.
The Silver Linings That Weren’t Enough
To be fair to India, the second half told a different story. They tightened defensively, created a few genuine openings through Shilanand Lakra and Aditya Lalage, and showed enough character to prevent the score from getting worse. An evenly contested third quarter ended goalless. But the match was a distant memory by then, and when Domene added his fourth in the 60th minute against the run of play, it felt less like a football punch and more like a final, brutal full stop.
The image that will linger is not of Argentina’s brilliance — though they were genuinely clinical — but of the penalty stroke that could have changed everything, and didn’t.
What Lies Ahead
India face Belgium again on February 14 and Argentina once more on February 15, both at the same Birsa Munda ground where Thursday’s horror show unfolded. Following the home leg, India travel to Hobart for matches against Spain and Australia later in February. The campaign is long, and mathematically, nothing is over. But the soul of this team needs a response far more urgently than the standings do.
Head coach Craig Fulton will have a long night of film to review and even longer conversations to have. The questions around defensive structure, penalty corner conversion and the mental fortitude of a young squad in high-pressure moments are no longer abstract. They played out in eight brutal goals on live television.
India have been here before, and they have found ways back. The bronze at Tokyo. The rise in Asian hockey. The passion that this country has always carried for its national sport. None of that disappears in one night at Rourkela.
But the road back starts now. And it needs to start honestly.
