Fit To Feed
Casado Cascade
The Birds' reintroduction to the World Battle tournament involved a humbling by reigning Hungarian national champions and former Trophy of Legends winner Mid or Feed, who demonstrated to Grilled Birds what they were missing in a 6-1 steamrolling.
Chan Ze Han relished the opportunity to lead the team out as
Tian Yonghang made to save some legs, but the talisman could only accept that there were some obstacles that even he could not will the rest to overcome.
Mid or Feed's Dutch boss Kelvin Bekkers had them face Grilled like-for-like in a 2-5-3, captained by former Bolivian youth international winger Juan Pedro de Ávila. This would be an experienced lineup largely on the wrong side of thirty, but with Tavinho Soares, Atanas Danev, Levan Maghadadze and of course Péter Apostol bringing caps to all areas of the field, it soon became clear that there were next to no weaknesses in this Hungarian side.
It was hardly like Grilled were short on star power either, but against the sheer battle-worn know-how of this Mid Or Feed squad, they unavoidably looked like schoolboys at times. The drenched pitch wouldn't impede Mid from putting the ball where they wanted, when they wanted, and after eleven minutes, a sustained passing action had Portuguese forward Afonso Casado nose past
Aw Keng Chuan, to slip the opening goal past
Dimitris Germanakos.
Grilled's Greek goalkeeper had actually been correctly positioned then, but Casado just made it look effortless. It might have been two for him as he banged a screamer at the far post three minutes later, which behooved Germanakos to spring across for a fingertip save. Mid continued their barrage with Colombian Estéfano Whitaker reliably sending them in from the right, but the Birds survived somehow, and
Lim An Keng made the most of a rare cross from
Brian Reddy to level it up in the 25th.
Maghadadze would not be much troubled after that equalizer, as Mid poured on the class;
Chia Kwang Tse sacrificed himself in trying to hold up play and allow his teammates to recover 28 minutes in, but his yellow card would be for naught, as the Mid attackers cut Grilled's ramshackle defence to ribbons, for Atanas Danev to score.
Brian Reddy would moreover be booked too, as he caught Danev late to no effect.
If the Birds believed that they could turn it around in the second half, they were badly mistaken, as Mid were hiding a lot more in their locker. They would go up a couple more gears in the second half with many of their players able to move faster than the Grilled players had expected, and Dutch hotshot Jurgen Meekhof belted a third past Germanakos in the 54th minute. Not to be outdone,
Chan Ze Han soon took on and beat Imre Lits at the other end, but the opposing midfielder had done enough to leave Chan with an impossible angle.
Grilled would wilt seriously after the seventieth minute, as Mid's orchestration exhausted them beyond repair. There wasn't much shape left in the Birds as Mid made pretty triangles advancing into their half, and Felipe Ladron de Guevara's easy finish in the 72nd would be followed by Estéfano Whitaker all but walking it into the net three minutes later, with the usually-reliable
Ha Qicai abandoning him entirely.
Without much left to lose, Tian would have
Paulino Trindade and
José Luiz Velho on for Reddy and Chan in the final few minutes, with the match getting a final wind in stoppage time. Mid made one further big push that ended with Casado skipping clear of Chia and chipping an exasperated oh so cleanly; Trindade would embark on a brave solo rush from the restart, and did well to test Maghadadze at the end of it.