Ermita Out
Diez One
Venezuelan III.4 side La ermita F.C flattered to deceive in their Golden Trophy quarterfinals against the Birds, as they switched tactics from the counterattacking 4-5-1 that had served them so well against the Hammers - and had it blow up in their face. With Hungarian striker László Meskó down with a knee concern, 32 year-old Englishman Steven Northausen would lead the line together with Preecha Muengwong, but neither would see much of the ball in a heavy drubbing by Grilled.
Facing the Birds head-on in a 3-5-2 seemed a bold but practicable approach by their Scots boss Rory Heatley, and it did appear more than tenable from the early going. Recent national youth playmaker Lucas Quiroz would have fun baiting Grilled's midfielders in the eleventh minute, and a cheeky reverse backheel to his Los Llaneros teammate Luis Diez left the latter with the opportunity to chip
Dimitris Germanakos, which he happily took.
It could have gone even better for La ermita had Jhoan Zuleta been just a bit quicker to a through ball on the restart, but
Aw Keng Chuan was just a tad faster, and the race ended with Zuleta booked for a last-ditch step-in. It was then anybody's game for a while with furious raids up and down the field, before
Brian Reddy bewitched Siegfried Diller for a second with his footwork on the right in the 29th minute, leading to an assist for
Chia Kwang Tse.
That only encouraged Chia to bomb forward more from his central position, something that the young La ermita midfielders turned out to be ill-equipped to stem. Quiroz couldn't quite stick to Chia as he surged forward before finding the bottom corner of Luís Glória's net 37 minutes in, and
Hwang Teck Fu made full use of the Venezuelan team's self-reproaching, to up it to 3-1 the next minute.
The second half saw
Joe Reece replace
Chan Ze Han in what would be the Welshman's last appearance for Grilled Birds, given just-released official news of his transfer out, to be completed later in the day. As might have been expected, his teammates would try to get him involved for a farewell present, but Reece proved surprisingly selfless in playing it right back to
Gandhik Chitre for an easy fourth goal, five minutes into the half.
La ermita were definitely not enjoying the situation, and there would be several mild cases of internal dissatisfaction, as the game continued without looking up for them. Jhoan Zuleta wasn't too happy with American veteran José Guadalupe Huicab not staying with
Chad Thach as the Grilled Number 22 escaped to score in the 72nd minute, and Thach only poured fuel on the fire with a repeat two minutes on.
