Cz-wa Race Ahead
Grilled are likely out of the running for the knockout phase following a second defeat, although they did get back off to a strong start to the second day, facing German IV.43 club FC Grüne Wiese. Their S$17.75 million star forward Harald Georg Pitta would return the favour twice after
Douglas Carapaica's opener from a corner, but it would be a one-sided storming afterwards, with the Birds ending the match at 7-2. It might even have been more, had chances like
Chan Ze Han's brilliant long range effort in the 74th, or
Teo Chuan Yong's post-rattler five minutes from time, gone in.
It was then Polish former Szafirowy Puchar Drugiej Szansy winners Arsenal_Cz-wa, and the fourth divisioners would eventually outlast the Birds, in mirroring their style to boot. Boasting Chinese international winger Qian Fulan, they surely had the Grilled set miss their own Wu Jinglong for a bit, as Qian owned the right wing against
Salah Kamel. A quickfire double by Vladimir Zhadov and Daniel Parzy towards the end of a strangely-subdued first half would be answered just as rapidly by
Chan Ze Han and
Bhavya Panigrahi, but Józef Płaszczymąka pulled some jaw-dropping tricks for 3-2 just three minutes into the next half, and Qian finished the job.
Farmer Bunnies would enjoy a much better second day as they won both their fixtures, the first a 1-0 against Finnish VI.320 challengers Tapza FT. That was not to say that it came smoothly, though, as the early going would be filled with a number of near-misses, most from counters, with the biggest culprit being
Vitaliy Efendiev. In the end, it took substitute
Mushtag Al-Nameeri to show the way, as he finally put it past Slovenian custodian Žiga Novak in the 82nd.
The green-shirted Divine Overconfidence from the Austrian III.11 would be next to live up to their naming, as they crashed 1-3 despite absolutely dominating possession.
Vishnu Tallapaka and
Vitaliy Efendiev would have the Buns ahead before Jochen Dobler pulled one back for DOB, but the player-coach would sky a penalty in the second half, leaving
Billy Camperio to seal it amidst a flurry of counters towards the end of the match.
Grilled International continued to share the Birds' fortunes, as they split their record too. There would be a big 6-1 walloping of Spanish Division Five outfit Kiwis tristes initially, that had
Wang Chu Chi open the floodgates with his second-half hat-trick, that after Attila Petrényi made it 3-1. Romanian V.217 champs Spray n'Pray would do much the same to them in return, however, with
Subhi bin Hj Ahmad scoring International's only goal as Andrei Simionescu led Spray to a 4-1 victory.
