Canada falls to Germany in Olympic field hockey opener

Canada's men's field hockey team lost to a dominant German squad in its opening match of Tokyo 2020, falling to the powerhouse nation 7-1 on Saturday.

Germany's Christopher Rühr and Lukas Windfeder led the way for the four-time Olympic champions, each with a pair of goals, as Canada was outshot 22-2. Keegan Pereira scored the lone goal for Canada.

"We're obviously disappointed to give up seven goals. We didn't play our best game," Pereira said after the match.

"But overall, Germany is a top-five team in the world and they're probably better than that, to be fair. We know moving forward in the tournament we're capable of doing much more than we showed today."

"Of course we know Canada is not the best team to face in the group stage, but that doesn't matter," said Rühr, the International Hockey Federation's rising star award recipient in 2013 and 2015.

"And in the final few minutes we scored a few goals which is always a good feeling, 7-1 is a great result."

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Germany opened the scoring late in the first quarter off a penalty corner, after John Smythe took out Rühr in the circle. Windfeder made no mistake, finding the top corner to give Germany the early lead.

Canada tied it in the opening minute of the second quarter on its first shot of the game. Flois van Son sent a cross pass into the circle, deflecting off Gabriel Ho-Garcia and right onto the stick of Pereira, who found the back of the net.

"[It's] always special to score in the Olympics," Pereira said.

"It was quite special scoring against Germany having played with a lot of these guys in the German league and also very special to get that 1-1 goal to tie it up and give our team some confidence in the game."

But Germany later regained the lead and never looked back.

After a Canadian turnover, Rühr came down the wing and beat a sprawling Antoni Kindler to go up 2-1.

Rühr then netted his second goal of the match three minutes later to give Germany a 3-1 lead.

Germany went up 4-1 before halftime, with Windfeder scoring again on another penalty corner as Canada was outshot 10-1 in the first half.

Germany added one more in the third quarter — with Martin Haner making it 5-1 as Germany went 3-8 on penalty corners in the match — and two more in the fourth quarter with goals from Niklas Bosserhoff and Mats Grambusch in the dying minutes.

With the win, Germany now sits atop Pool B on goal differential.

Canada will face Great Britain on Monday, which won its opener 3-1 over South Africa.

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