Untoward Spectacle
Oh Not Again
Luxembourg Nationaldivisioun hosts FaitSonSpectacle brought back unwanted memories as they reprised the style that Robbie Football Club had employed to defeat the Birds in this season's cup final encounter, with
Chan Ze Han again much the only one to make any headway against it. Spectacle kept the field closed, and play verged on unwatchable at times, but the results bore their approach out.
Kuwaiti goalkeeper Badr Al-muhza, capped 38 times for his national team, is actively trying to impress his way back into the setup, and this Spectacle side had to be as good a platform as any. Their standard 5-5-0 under Geert Piron afforded him maximum protection, and with Ukrainian Boryslav Yashkin having hit a particularly fine vein of form, they had at least one easy outlet. Against this, the Birds would tighten their game too, with both
Shekar Kannan and
Salah Kamel folding in, instead of trying to test the fullbacks.
The heavy, waterlogged pitch made fluid wing movement a pipe dream anyhow, and probably suited Spectacle more, from how their tactics didn't require them to get close up. Yashkin would get right up into the face of
Bhavya Panigrahi as early as the fourth minute, before dealing it on to Swedish teammate Ali Eren Elhan; it was some twenty-odd metres out, but the powerful effort still managed to brush the post - if with
Jānis Salmiņš having it covered - in a sign of more to come.
It would be the unexpected that would lead to the opening goal, all said, as
Shekar Kannan went against the grain, in taking Elhan on in the 19th minute, before getting past him on the outside. There seemed little enough danger in that, with Spectacle having ample bodies in the box, but a little touch from
Teo Chuan Yong, and another accidentally from a defender, would leave
Chan Ze Han with ball at feet right in front of goal - and he doesn't miss from there.
This tap-in would be answered with alacrity, though, with their reply also fittingly deriving from their right side. Finnish winger Raimo Kaipainen appeared no threat at all as he picked it up just across the halfway line, but a pass and a return later, and he was booting it hard past Salmiņš, from just outside the penalty area. It could actually have been more as the very busy Elhan then set it up for Göktürk Koşa on the other flank a while later, but that one flew slightly wide.
Spectacle felt the team more in their element as the half drew to a close, given Grilled's general lack of headway against their reactive approach. The break did recharge the Birds' batteries to a large extent, and they would come out with guns ablaze. Perhaps the longest siege of the day thus far would see
Douglas Carapaica hit it to the left bottom corner in the 50th minute, but Badr Al-muhza dove promptly for the save. This turned into a rapid counterattack, and Elhan was somehow there to apply the finish, though Salmiņš lived up to Badr's example with a stop at full stretch of his own.
Grilled wouldn't be as fortunate on Spectacle's next big opportunity, sadly, which came as Kamel was brought off for
Kalki Parvathaneni. This substitution has brought renewed invention to the Birds often enough before, but today, it was merely a distraction for the opponents' deceptively-measured advance up the centre. Frenchman Patrick Gruel patiently shielded it against
Chu Xin Lee whilst waiting for his fellows to make their runs, and Argentine expat Sung-Sik Oh would present himself. Oh's dribble into the box was excellent, but still bested by his outstanding curled finish.
That would also be Gruel's last major contribution, as he would go off for Lauri Plathan, about ten minutes later. Bakhtiar would make a double sub in the 80th minute,
Douglas Carapaica and
Sølve Lunde on for
Gilbert Webb and
Abd Hadi Taib Mazhud, but that evidently didn't produce the spark that Grilled needed.
