Champloo Casualties
Two Down
The bottom of the table clash ended with honours even, as two first-half goals from the free-scoring
Maikel Rotteveel were sufficient to secure Grilled's first point in II.4. This came at a high cost, sadly, as the Birds lost both their best defender and best striker in one fell swoop.
Champloo had only one goal to their credit so far after losses to Holy Satans and Chemistry, and staked their fate on a counterattacking gameplan. This was complicated by the fact that Grilled sat even deeper than they did, not least because they were the away side; Rotteveel would get his hundredth league goal for the Birds in fitting style, cleverly flighting a free-kick into the Champloo goal before countryman Hilbert van der Berken had the chance to get his wall organized.
Grilled coped well enough with the Champloo attack for much of the half, until former Pakistani national defender
Nawaz Talib was bundled over by Croatian forward Gordan Pavelka in the box. It didn't look serious at first, and Pavelka was let off with a warning, but Talib was soon back on the ground as the pain set in.
Hu Jianyong replaced the stricken Talib, just in time to watch Pavelka blast a wild shot through a mess of players and into Valdir's bottom corner. Grilled struck back from the kick-off, as
Fan Chuancheng displayed his infinite promise by outfoxing his man on the left and serving Rotteveel a chance on the plate, which the Dutchman mercilessly snapped up.
The Birds were not wholly innocent of rough play, and
Ciro Penati cynically got both the ball and the man as he went through Abdul Nasir bin Ismail by the touchline. The referee, who had been letting the game flow as much as he could, saw nothing wrong with that, to the fury of the Champloo fans, as their homegrown star was carried off.
Perhaps encouraged by that, Champloo's winger Ole Spatafora leaped aggressively into Rotteveel the next time he received the ball. The Dutchman was caught on the ankle, and it was immediately clear that he would not be able to continue. The first booking finally came, but it was of little consolation to the Grilled travelling support, who bore no great hope for substitute
Ivaylo Mirchev.
The Bulgarian actually had a fair game, but Grilled didn't get the ball to him much as they were forced onto the defensive after the break, with two key men out. Inevitably, Champloo equalized again, as Bolivian Darko Ovando scored his first goal of the season, flying high over both Jianyong and Lik-Tsun.
Grilled had by then set their sights on getting something, anything, out of the match, as three straight defeats would surely be too much to bear. Only frenzied defending prevented the home team from turning the game around, as Suhaizi bin Jusoh pulled his shot wide from ten metres, and Pavelka went to ground too readily when he had just Valdir to contend with.
The final ten minutes were fought at an extreme pace as Champloo chased maximum points and Grilled's wingers sought to punish them on the break, and a sending-off finally came as Spatafora wrestled Chuancheng to the ground in an effort to prevent a break, after he had lost the ball.
