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FIXTURE HISTORY |
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Season 57 | W | 2 - 4 | League | Season 57 | L | 2 - 4 | League | Season 57 | L | 5 - 0 | Tournament (Playoffs) | Season 55 | L | 3 - 4 | Tournament (Group Phase) | Season 51 | W | 3 - 0 | Tournament (Group Phase) |
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Being Unbeatable
Just Too Good
Grilled bowed out in the semifinals of the Singapore Masters, but they could rightly leave with their heads held high, having lost to a quite incredible Be Champions FC side. Managing to edge the possession stakes was by itself special against the star-studded BCFC, who are currently on a nine-match winning streak.
Matching them was always going to be a bona-fide quest even with a full squad, and the Birds were without both
Lee Lee Hao, through suspension, and
Wong Ping Shun, to a knee injury. This meant that
Ling Fuquan would go back to partnering
Gene Filippone at the back, while an off-colour
Zhao Jing Wei was again pressed into service as a winger.
Be Champions FC, despite having all three of their core midfielders recruited to the national team for the World Cup qualifying campaign, surprisingly chose to work the counterattack. Ali Ütkün would lead the line alone, while Moldovan Dorin Bejan filled in as an extra centreback.
The Birds were clearly the underdogs here, but a spate of wins in recent games had given them heart, and they sought to move the ball swiftly forward without too much ado. This achieved little against BCFC's iron defence, however, until the 19th minute when
Chow Ying Lee had a go from the head of the penalty area, and saw it spin past Edmundo Ortega.
This stroke of luck was more than Grilled had dared hope for, and it was nullified almost as quickly as it had arrived. It was all still a blur when Feng Shifang's lob from kick-off for Ütkün forced
Ling Fuquan to nod it behind for a corner. Agasthya Vaidhyanathan took his time setting it up, and Arnold Pang rose the highest in a very crowded six-yard box to head powerfully over a sea of faces, and into the net.
Be Champions FC then turned Grilled's biggest weapon against them, as their own massed attack found great success against the uncertain Birds backline. Not expecting such numbers, the Grilled players nevertheless hurried about with purpose, but Ütkün's world-class right foot blazed an incredible strike into the far top corner to give them the lead.
Grilled would count themselves fortunate to get to half-time just one down and still with eleven men on the pitch, after the rusty
Ling Fuquan's late tackle on Benoît Pouderoux was deemed to have come after the French winger had struck; it could so easily have been a red card and a penalty.
The breather did the Birds some good, and they started the second half as they did the first, marginally on top.
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim got the ball in a decent position with his back to goal a couple of times, but Agasthya Vaidhyanathan stuck to him like glue on both occasions.
They might have turned the semifinal around, had
Low Aik Jia kept it down in the 60th minute - the speedy winger had kept an unusually low profile against Pouderoux today, but then broke straight through between Bennie van Wijk and Bejan when the duo had their guard down. The stadium drew in its collective breath as Ortega came out to greet Low... and held it as Low cut a lob through Ortega's gloves, only for it to float just over the crossbar.
Low's loss was BCFC's gain, as a friendly ballboy allowed Ortega to launch his goal-kick right back almost to the opposing penalty area. Pouderoux brought it down with impressive grace, and following a quick exchange that took
Ling Fuquan out, slid it across goal for Ang Tse Jian to apply a simple finishing touch.
Grilled never quite looked like overcoming a two-goal deficit, and
Wong Tian Han's save from Foo Ah De shortly after was the sum total of their defiance.