Mice On The City
Lim Shows Promise
Syrian II.4 long-timers Mousecity would entertain Grilled Birds in this Friday's World Battle game, which Grilled won handily for all of Mousecity's hustle. Starting the match a man down due to bad registrations had a lot to do with that, with the ensuing 4-4-1 quite unsuited to shackling the Birds. Taiwanese captain Ma Renpeng did all he could in midfield, and Mousecity had talents such as Rhys Shelley in defence and István Mészáros in attack, but this was ultimately not enough to make up for their shortfall in personnel.
The Syrians would resort to testing
Dimitris Germanakos from range right off the bat as a reaction, but the Greek custodian was not about to yield to such efforts, or at least the bulk of them.
Lim An Keng's eighth minute poach after slack defending by Uruguay centreback Zacarías Pi gave Grilled a perhaps undeserved lead, which lasted all of three minutes as Ma crashed it in off the bottom of the crossbar, from way outside the box.
Chia Kwang Tse had to have regretted allowing Shelley the space to pick Ma out on hindsight there!
Mousecity were buoyed, but were also all out of ideas, as Grilled patiently passed it about in midfield probing for weaknesses, as they could well afford to. This was more than Mousecity's players could keep up with for long, and all it took was a flash of inspiration by
Brian Reddy, to flick it across to
Gandhik Chitre for 2-1 in the 29th minute. The Birds continued playing hard, and after a booking for
Federico Parada after cutting down Martin Zerzán, Reddy and
Mohd Marzuki Khairul would make it four, with Nabeel Amir barely warding
Chad Thach's angled curler off in between.
The outcome was frankly obvious for some time before that, what with the Birds boasting about two-thirds of the possession, with perhaps the only disappointment being
Chan Ze Han not getting a goal for himself. Being forty, he could perhaps be forgiven that, and when
Joe Reece replaced him for the next half, there was a sense that the Welsh forward was trying to put himself in the shop window.
If that was the intention, it didn't go over too well, what with Reece being a shadow of his former self after long stretches out in the wilderness. Always a confidence player, he would misplace all too many touches for
Tian Yonghang's liking, and it was perhaps expected that his teammates would seek other avenues eventually.
Lim An Keng was positively brimming with self-belief in contrast, and when Parada slashed in from the left in the 58th, he offered himself up for the finishing touch, and scored with a neat half-volley at the near post.
Chad Thach followed up three minutes later as Zacarías Pi lost his man once more, but home-grown Number One Nabeel Amir did rouse the Mousecity fans with a series of eye-catching saves in the last twenty minutes. The pick of those would be a tip-over on the retreat from Lim in the 73rd, and then a pure reaction stop with his left leg as Thach raked it towards the far corner, two minutes from time.
