Coming Up Blanc
General Frustration
Grilled Birds would be dragged into another disappointing World Battle tournament morass, as they were held to a draw in an eminently-winnable match, by Venezuelan II.4 club SportBlanc F.C. Desperately poor finishing plagued the Birds in stark contrast to the Venezuelans, who made the most of their limited chances in a counterattacking stance.
Grilled had some cause to be confident, having won their latest two World Battle fixtures before this, and also against Haha in the league. They would however be without
Bilal Mohammad Harun on a long-term injury, which let
Teo Chuan Yong back into midfield, and
Salah Kamel to start on the left. SportBlanc's core controller would be Dutchman Yves van Ekeren, but they had no lack of quality throughout their 3-5-2. Target man Zdeněk Skalička and support striker Takhir Shigapov in particular had to be considered more than a match for Grilled's backline.
The Birds would get down to business immediately, all the more with SportBlanc's Iranian head coach Esfandyar Jouzi asking a lot of their three-man defence, in kickstarting counters aggressively. Former national winger Paolo Delfino would tuck in from their left when needed, but with captain and ex-Bolivian international Yoshiyuki Ando making it a point to stay in an advanced position on the other flank, it was always going to be dicey for SportBlanc whenever Grilled attacked in force.
Matters would come to a head in the eighteenth minute, as SportBlanc appeared to have dealt with yet another Grilled move, only for the referee to blow for a penalty. Yoshiyuki would protest immediately, but the replays would confirm that Rudi Thorsgaard had indeed illegally held
Chan Ze Han in the box.
Bhavya Panigrahi would take responsibility, only to ping it off the right goalpost, with Harri Varinen having gone the other way.
That was a letoff for SportBlanc, that as it turned out, lasted all of two minutes. Having admirably put the penalty miss behind them, the Birds entrusted
Shekar Kannan with the ball on the left, and he did excellently to cut to the inside of Andrés Moncayo, only to skew his shot badly. It was third time lucky as Panigrahi then stepped up to take a free-kick, and knocked it short for Teo to lift it inside, to find
Abd Hadi Taib Mazhud. He surely couldn't miss in that position, and did not. 1-0.
This would be an exception to the Birds' general impotency in the penalty area for the day, however, and although Kamel for one churned out opportunities from the wing, there was simply no killer instinct on show, a breathtaking acrobatic near-miss by
Moey Xin Seng aside. Instead, it would be Skalička to exhibit a fearsome ruthlessness at the other end, as he confronted his first clear chance from Delfino's cross in the 38th minute, and outleapt both Panigrahi and Douglas to equalize.
Grilled started out all the stronger in the second half, but this again applied to most facets of their play other than scoring.
Chan Ze Han was not immune to the malaise for once, as he dithered rather too long running alongside a perfectly-weighted through pass by Abd Hadi, instead of simply sticking it to the far corner as he has done so often before in similar cases. In the end, Varinen would pounce with the angle gone, and even manage to hold on.
Still, the Birds were producing aplenty, and
Salah Kamel had a big one of his own coming from the other flank in the 55th minute, but his flicked header would glance a yard past the upright. Kamel would go off five minutes later for
Kalki Parvathaneni, who would again be unreasonably effective on the left wing. Another five minutes had barely passed, when Kalki seized upon Kannan's explosive dribble and pass from the opposite flank, itself coming after SportBlanc had wasted a free-kick awarded for a Panigrahi foul on Skalička. The ball appeared tricky to get under control, but Kalki was having none of that as he simply lashed it into the roof of the net, first time.
SportBlanc would respond instantly, alas. No-one could have expected Andrés Moncayo to do it, but the rightback advanced from his usual post unnoticed, before being handed off with the ball by Van Ekeren at the head of the semicircle. Moncayo went into action with a sudden spurt from a standing start that had most of the Grilled defenders rooted, and went on to evade
Douglas Carapaica's sliding challenge, and just about force it past
Jānis Salmiņš.
Fluke or not, the Birds remained no closer to winning this one than at the start, and although they would go on to dominate the remainder of the game, it was telling that their opponents probably came closest to taking it from their 78th minute free-kick routine. Poor defensive coverage saw the hanging ball slip through then, but Salmiņš stepped up authoritatively.
