Pakistan's embattled men's hockey team has failed to qualify for the Olympic Games for a third consecutive time after losing its final shot at a Paris ticket in the FIH Qualifiers in Oman, a result that left the game's former greats in Pakistan sad and outraged in equal measure.
After losing 0-4 to Germany in the tournament's semi-final, Pakistan went down 2-3 to New Zealand in the third-place match last night, ending their chances of making it to this year's Paris Olympics as only the top-three made the cut.
Pakistan's last Olympic appearance was in the 2012 Games where the team signed off 7th, a marginal improvement from its worst-ever 8th-place finish in the Beijing Games in 2008. The team is overall an eight-time medallist in the mega-event, three of them being gold (1960, 1968, and 1984).
