The Dutch side displayed clinical precision in the one-sided encounter, never really allowing much room to the Pakistanis who crashed to a last-place finish in the quadrangular. Netherlands won the title while England finished on the second spot followed by Germany.

It was a bitter result for Pakistan, which was hoping to achieve positive results in the tournament following a series of impressive performances that began with a title-winning triumph in the Asian Games in Guangzhou (China) late last year.

Team officials blamed exhaustion and poor umpiring as the main reasons behind their team’s below-par showing against the Dutch.

“Our players were unable to cope with the demands of back-to-back matches against top teams,” said Khawaja Junaid, the Pakistan team manager, referring to Pakistan’s games against Germany and Netherlands within a span of 24 hours. “In addition there were too many umpiring errors (in the match against Netherlands) which really affected our performance,” he added.

Pakistan may have failed to beat top hockey teams like world champions Australia, Netherlands and Germany in the recent past but team officials are confident that the Greenshirts are slowly but surely catching up with the big guns.

Last Friday, Pakistan dominated their Rabo Trophy match against Germany in Amsterdam but finally lost it 1-2 to fall out of the title race in the event that also features host  Netherlands and England.

Earlier this summer, the Pakistanis almost prevailed over Australia in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup final in the Malaysian city of Ipoh before losing in extra-time.

“We may have lost those matches but have gained a lot from them,” Junaid told Arab News from Amsterdam on Saturday. “We are playing close matches against top sides like Germany and Australia that is giving our boys a lot of self-belief. The way our team is improving, I would say that we will soon start winning such games,” stressed Junaid, a former Olympian.

“Over the last several years, we fell behind top teams because we were not getting enough opportunities to play against them. But now things have changed and we are playing more and more against the leading sides and that’s an added advantage as we prepare for the next year’s Olympic Games in London,” he added.

Pakistan suffered a setback on Friday with a 2-1 defeat by Germany in an action-packed encounter of the four-nation Rabo Trophy in Amsterdam.

The Greenshirts paid the price for a number of missed opportunities as the Germans raised their hopes to win the tournament.

After being held 2-2 by England in their previous match of the tournament on Wednesday, Pakistan was looking to beat the Germans and enhance its chances of winning the quadrangular event.

“We wasted too many opportunities,” said Junaid. “We missed around 10-12 realistic chances otherwise it could have been a different story,” he added.

Junaid said that Pakistan will work on this weakness in the next training camp after concluding this ongoing tour of Europe. “Our missing ratio is too high and that’s an alarming sign. We will have to work on it.”