Magik 4 - 0 Grilled Birds
Magiked Away
van der Zalm Towers
Barring a miracle, Grilled Birds are out of The Global Trophy, after they were beaten soundly by Dutch fifth division club Magik. The red-shirted hosts exemplified the counterattacking style to a tee, and Grilled were done once they failed to intimidate Marcel Ketellapper from the beginning.
It wasn't that Grilled could be writted off that easily - Magik didn't look invincible in their opening victory, to be certain, but if they had weak points, the Birds were not able to work on them. They fell for the breakaway easily enough in the eleventh minute, after
Kalki Parvathaneni had hooked an ambitious lob wide, having found no through route; Ketellapper put it back into play with haste, and seconds later, Freerk Verbon had pulled away to tuck it past
Valentin Batâr.
That was more or less the story of the match, which saw Parvathaneni the most productive of the Birds' forwards by far.
Chan Ze Han was in contrast greatly muted, and contributed little of the creativity that would have been necessary to unlock this defence. Despite all the odds against him, Parvathaneni would shake off Sirach Caberte for long enough to stop it for
Florus Romijn, but Ketellapper would fly forward to block the ensuing strike, almost before it left Romijn's boot.
The above was as good as it got for Grilled, who had to scramble whenever Magik recovered the ball, which happened on the regular.
Moey Xin Seng takedown of Mikael van der Zalm as the Dutch forward threatened to run away with it in the 28th minute was understandable, but it wouldn't save Grilled for long. Eight minutes later,
Mohammad Ramli Saliman misjudged his clearing header, and Árpád Horkits would convert after some good foresight from van der Zalm.
Empty-handed while winning almost two-thirds of the possession was a strange place to be in, and Grilled must have felt that their fortunes had to change sometime. It nearly did as they started the second period strongly, with
Cyril Künzler embarking on an eye-opening rampage down the right, after losing former Northern Irish youth international Jonathan Kelly after a wing battle.
Kalki Parvathaneni took over for the final leg, only to find himself shepherded expertly aside by Gradje Göbel.
The balance continued tipping towards the Birds, and their time appeared to have come 58 minutes in, with Chan awaking from his stupor to craft an exquisite setup for
Florus Romijn... who fanned it weakly wide. To make it worse, Grilled were once more slow to retreat, and Kelly knew exactly what he was doing, getting a headstart on the left. The cross was quite exact, and Mikael van der Zalm finished it in the air.
Chu Xin Lee and
Hoàng Trung Quá made their accustomed entrances, but didn't make much of an impact. Instead, van der Zalm would throw the latter off as Freerk Verbon's delivered in the 67th, and bagged another header for himself.
