Simon Sale
29 year-old Belgian striker
Dimitri Simon moved to Turkish Division Two club Spiritualized Fc, helmed by the U-20 coach of Azerbaijan, for a round five million Singapore dollars. This brings Grilled's previous aim of maintaining three top-class forwards to an end, but it was one that some fans had predicted was untenable beforehand.
"It's nice and it could work, but Grilled went for three guys who were simply, too good." retired banker Paul Kong, 62, said. "What they could have done was to bring in three workhorses at say, S$60k a week, but Rotteveel, Zainol and Simon all command over a hundred thousand. It just wasn't going to work. Grilled usually play the 3-5-2 and 4-5-1 in equal measure, with 3-4-3 only once in a blue moon, so it equates to paying almost half a million a month for a guy to sit on his butt."
"Man, I wish I could have landed such a deal when I was working." Kong added.
The income will refill Grilled's dangerously near-empty coffers and slash the wage bill to a more manageable S$1.2 million, while keeping
Maikel Rotteveel and
Subri bin Ku Zainol who do have age on their side. Simon joins French midfielder Arnaud Auchecorne as the main men of a revamped Spiritualized side, who will hope to finally push through into the Süper Lig after three seasons in the top three in Division Two.
