Villa Invaded
Press Broken
Aston Piaston Pantso Villa might be unbeaten in the Greek II.3, but they would prove no match for a Grilled Birds selection still riding high on their Ruby Challenger Cup triumph. The visiting Albinos would seek to destroy over creating, hardly an unthinkable strategy against the Birds' proven firepower. Villa's passivity would be their downfall, though, as they exhibited close to zero ability to stage a rally, once they fell behind early on.
In theory at least, Villa had strengths that they could draw upon, chiefly their optionality on the wings; Nikolakis Gorgonakis and Ville Toiva had shown themselves to be well-rounded wide players able to bolster the middle or fly down the flanks as required, and they were moreover adequately supported by designated fullbacks in a 4-5-1 today. Practically, however, they would barely have time on the ball, as Grilled exerted themselves like they had against Ah Beng FC - fully and with little mercy.
The Birds saw no need to hide their intentions, as they concentrated on picking apart Villa's central defence through honest passing and movement, which would indeed be more than the Huang Chaofu-led backline could handle. Villa's Spanish captain had led them to three titles in over 300 matches played, and he had certainly been made to look worse in at most a handful of those. Having to handle someone on a par with
Chan Ze Han couldn't have been a common experience, not with Chan taking this World Battle outing seriously as always.
Chan would be destined to be a creator today, that said, and the first instance of that would be his almost-casual reverse pass to the opposite corner of the box, in anticipation of that space being attacked. Chan's instincts were spot-on, as
Kalki Parvathaneni had simultaneously cut sharply to the inside of Laurent Pillon. There was no stopping an unleashed Kalki from behind, and the Number Ten would bang it past Per Fyhrby at the near post.
The former Swedish U-20 goalkeeper wasn't having one of his better days either, to Villa's detriment, and he would allow
Bilal Mohammad Harun's relatively pedestrian effort past him in the 21st minute. While that made two assists for Chan already, the forward would be rather less successful in going it himself, beginning with his scooping it onto the post from close range after 28 minutes. Several poor attempts would follow, culminating in a magnificent 57th minute header that Fyhrby however wasn't about to let past him.
Grilled's other forwards would have better luck, and
Bernie Egan would put the Birds 3-0 up some six minutes on, as Kalki laid it off following some tricky footwork on the left side. This was not to say that the Albinos were posing much of a threat otherwise, with their lone forward Mechyslau Dziagil' having become something of a fourth midfielder in the meantime. That spoke volumes for the unselfishness of the former Belarus youth international, if less for Villa's chances of scoring.
Dziagil' would have his big moment eventually, after an energetic spell of pressing from Villa, which had forced Grilled all the way back to their own penalty area.
Gilbert Webb has come under criticism lately for switching off at inopportune times, and thus was it as he was slow to react to Panigrahi's pass across defence. Dziagil' disappointed with his half-volley however, to
Jānis Salmiņš's huge relief.
It would instead be the Birds to go four up a couple of minutes later, as
Moey Xin Seng fed on
Teo Chuan Yong's cross from deep.
Wu Jinglong and
Salah Kamel popped in with ten minutes remaining, which only added to Villa's discomfiture, but yielded no further goals.
