Kings Before A Hundred
Butcher Blast
Grilled Birds got their first invitation to Barbados, with Real Kingsland, currently placed second in the Barbados Premier League, as their hosts. The 170 000 seater Bernabeu Gardens stadium made an impression on the Grilled players, who responded with a respectable showing in a tight and tactical match.
Kingsland battened down the hatches with a strict 4-5-1, anchored by by U-20 internationals Leroy Coe, Norman Law and Connor Howorth. With such a solid backline, it was no wonder that Salieri and Lihai were plain out of ideas, and failed to find a way through.
While tall Finn Lasse Hautamäki wasn't the most deadly of threats, his height served him well as Kingsland's lone target man, and the home team had a few chances in the first half. The most telling came after leftback
Li Shunguo somehow got it into his head to blindly pass the ball back towards his own goal, without checking if his goalkeeper was actually ready. Opposition winger Alan Harvey intercepted and stepped past Bao-Tam, but could only hit the ball across goal from a tight angle.
The next opportunity came after yet another broken down attack by Grilled, as the Birds' midfielders were left pointing fingers at each other after realising that nobody had stayed back to guard against the inevitable counter. Leroy Coe ran half the length of the pitch to challenge Bao-Tam, who however managed an impressive one-handed save this time.
Grilled soon recognized the folly in their game plan, and mostly sat back after a tactical reorganization at the break. While this didn't go down well with the 4000-odd fans in attendance, it proved a smart course of action for the visitors, as neither side mustered a serious attempt on goal. Badrul did however hack Coe down, which required Spanish defender Miguel Argüeso to come on and replace his understudy.
Spotkicks would have been the expected endpoint of the match, had the 19 year-old Vern Butcher not beaten Bao-Tam from a free-kick in the ninth minute of added time, bringing the sluggish game to a close.
