Terrific Disaster
Funeral At The Rose
Grilled found out the very hard way that they had severely underestimated Division Five side FC TerriFic, as they were taken to pieces by the sheer industry of the challengers. Roared on by nearly fifty thousand fans at their La Vie En Rose, an atmosphere no less daunting than The Cooking Pot, the home side ran riot against the mantally-unprepared Grilled mixed XI.
Grilled had two stars in
Quah Han Kok and
Dani Spirig in midfield, not to mention the always-dangerous Rotteveel, but were undone by a terrible defence of Tuan-Mu and Seng-Huat. Liehner had obviously decided not to risk his first-team defenders on such an assignment, in the hope that Grilled's midfield would settle the game, but was proven hopelessly wrong.
The signs were there right from the first minute, as it was clear that this was FC Terrific's cup final. To be fair, they had not been overly impressive against hplanet in the previous round, only prevailing 4-3 after a bruising encounter, but it turned out that they had a couple more gears to shift. Experienced Dutch striker Kees-Jan Wijnholds provided the spearhead, driving a long pass straight by Valdir in their first real attack after two minutes.
It proved the catalyst for a breathless first-half, as Grilled's known quality was submerged beneath the hosts' seemingly boundless stamina. Even Han Kok struggled, as his every touch was met with a random opposition player harrying him from his back. The other Grilled representatives fared even worse, and in the case of Spirig he at least had some excuse as he hobbled after a hard tackle from Mateu Farré that got the latter booked.
The fans didn't care, and Grilled were systematically bullied off their game. Grilled's fans' hopes that the first goal was just a freak evaporated as Adrián Chacín burst forward fearlessly to more or less kick the ball out of Valdir's hands for the second, and winger Bernd Brams continued to hammer home the message as he put in a tackle that might have taken Tingfeng out had the youngster not hurdled it.
The pace appeared to tire even the superbly motivated FC TerriFic heroes, and Khairul Azuar bin Dani slowed suddenly in the middle of a blistering run, leaving Mirchev slightly surprised that his slide in could actually connect. Khairul would recover to bang in the fourth goal after Wijnholds snuck in a third, though.
Four-nil is a hard scoreline to come back from for the best of teams, and Grilled were nowhere near the best of teams on this day. Liehner sent out an unchanged side at half-time, which despite a bright start did not manage to pull anything back, and were instead hit on the break by Gerard Scheurer after two half-chances were spurned by the hosts.
It was actually a foregone conclusion sometime before that, and FC TerriFic added two more from Mateu Farré and Cai Enzhi to record perhaps their most famous scalp to date.
