Germany captain Maximillian Muller on Monday said Korea surprised them with two early strikes but expressed happiness at the comeback in the second half of their hockey World Cup Pool A match.
Defending champions Germans had to toil to snatch the draw from the clutches of defeat after world-ranked fifth Korea went 2-0 up in the first half at the floodlit Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.
"They (Korea) surprised us with the two goals in the first half but there was no change in their style of play," Muller told reporters in the post-match press conference.
"But I am quite happy with our comeback. At the end we had lot of chances to score but we failed. We are looking forward to get better step by step," he said.
The Germans earned as many as five penalty-corners in the first half but failed to covert a single one and Muller blamed it on the deep nature of the turf.
"I am not that happy with our penalty-corner conversion. We got five penalty-corners in the first half but did not score a single goal.
"The pitch has something do with it. The pitch is quite deep. When you go for drag-flicks the stick gets stuck a little bit on the pitch. The pitch is also little bit bouncy, but it will get better and better with every passing day," Muller said.
Germany coach Markus Weise, however, said he was not very happy with the result but praised his boys for the comeback.
"I am little bit unhappy with the start to the tournament but the boys invested a lot of hard work to comeback into the match and this is the positive thing that came out of this match," he said.
"It is very difficult to score against Korea. They are very good in counter attacks. But this inexperienced side didn't panic after they were 0-2 down," Weise added.
Korea captain Ho Jong Seo and coach Kyo Seok Shin said his team lacked the sting in the second half of the match. "We gave our all in the first half and so we were powerless in the second half," Seo said.
"We played well in the first half but we played well only in patches in the second half. I am not very satisfied with the result, we can do better than this.
"We will take one match at a time and try to give our best in the next match. We are taking this tournament as a preparatory event ahead of the Asian Games," he added.
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