Uno Calcio
Marzuki Makes Sure
Grilled Birds squeaked into the knockout stage of the Dominion International Cup with their 8-3 win over Jamaican III.5 side Bischofshol Calcio, as the blue-clad two-time national Challenger Cup holders gave the Birds something to think about in the second half. Their Kazakh boss Konstantin Dyachenko had yet to loosen the pursestrings much after the S$10.7 million sale of Belize U-20 midfielder Freddie Nathan to Uganda's Canes Anthi a couple of months ago, though he did recruit young Italian sweeper-keeper Paolo Cabella, as well as 34 year-old German attacker Andrea Di Rosa on the cheap.
Di Rosa would be their point man in a 2-5-3 today with Cabella on the bench, but Grilled's biggest concern remained Venezuelan left forward Perico Abenoza, who was clearly a challenge for
Raúl Himadas. In midfield, Morocco's new hope Abdelqayyoum Chakara held court, with a senior call-up expected soon for the man with 22 youth caps. Polish defender Bartosz Rdzanek was then their go-to free-kick specialist, with Romanian Number One Răzvan Muşat behind him.
This was a honed XI by all means, and thus it came of something of a pleasant surprise that Grilled Birds dismantled it so cleanly. The threat of Abenoza would not materialize in the first half with Grilled forcing their opponents well back, and
Raúl Himadas would instead feature on the rampage - and blast one past Muşat in the seventh minute. Bischofshol simply couldn't play their own game, and after
Brian Reddy made the most of ex-Malaysian youth international winger Sim Teck Tze slipping up to assist
Chad Thach in the 14th minute, it was the indomitable
Aw Keng Chuan to have one of his thunderbolts come good.
That had the Birds 3-0 up by the 20th minute, with few signs of slowing; while the Jamaicans had been tamed 0-3 and 0-4 by Sweet Hurricane and FIFS respectively in the previous rounds, their Nervous Men diehard fan club would still find it hard to accept their players crumbling to this extent. As captain, Sim would try to hold his team together, but they were just unsuited to be on the defence.
Lim An Keng and
Gandhik Chitre would mercilessly exploit the Bischofshol defenders' poor composure as they tried to play too high up the field, and they would be five goals down as Chitre all but walked it in, with 30 minutes gone.
It was all falling apart for the Jamaicans as Rdzanek flirted with a sending off with his high-looking tackle on
Hwang Teck Fu soon afterwards, but the referee went with a caution instead, probably after considering the circumstances. It remained a race for goals with the Birds having a seven-goal deficit to make up on Sweet Hurricane, but there would be little movement in the other fixture despite Hurricane fullback Kazuma Fuchigami getting a red in the 29th minute for violent conduct. That left FIFS a single goal ahead on Michael Kendale's eighth minute opener, and left the Birds hanging in third.
There were no signs of an upturn as the games entered the second half, with the Birds finding it hard to rekindle their former all-conquering swagger, after cooling off. Instead, it would be Bischofshol Calcio to regain their usual confidence, which had
Chia Kwang Tse booked in the 62nd minute for trying to hold play up. Worse, news would come in from Kanto that the Hurricanes had equalized, through a neat tap-in by former San Marino youth striker Eugenio Cipriani.
Grilled were making no headway here, and their saviour would instead arise some eight thousand miles to the east, as Michael Kendale took over against a flagging ten-man Hurricanes. The Englishman got on the end of Fernando Di Nardo's inch-perfect pass to have FIFS ahead again in the 75th minute... and 3-1 up with his hat-trick goal in the 81st. This had the Birds finally displace Sweet Hurricane in the table into second spot, with Fernando Di Nardo then giving them extra breathing room with a superb volley just two minutes on.
They needed it too, as no sooner had the chants in Japan begun to fade, when Abdelqayyoum Chakara found Bischofshol's first goal in the competition with a stubborn run onto Andrea Di Rosa's probing pass.
Aw Keng Chuan's absence had quite a lot to do with that, as
Genki Nagano looked a bit lost coming in. Grilled would be given a clear penalty immediately afterwards for an obvious shirt-pull on
Lim An Keng, and
Raúl Himadas' putt to the right post was too well-placed for Muşat, despite the goalie guessing correctly.
The scoring was just getting started, as it turned out, with Grilled unable to relax as Bischofshol attacked like a team with nothing to lose - which they were. Di Rosa was a man possessed as he charged up the left, and none of the Birds players particularly wanted to get near him, leaving him to force it past
Radomil Marcol. The 88th minute would then see two whole goals, as
Ha Qicai celebrated a classy chip off Hwang's vision, only for Chakara to again profit through a left-wing breakthrough.
This was 7-3, and meant that the Birds remained barely in second by the skin of their teeth - on goals scored.
Tian Yonghang had seen enough, and he would instruct
Mohd Marzuki Khairul and
Kendell El Khateeb to take their time going on for
Gandhik Chitre and
Darko Andrović. Marzuki seemed not to have registered his head coach's orders to slow the game down... which was just as well, as he slipped a through ball by
Chia Kwang Tse past Saudi centreback Rashad Malik Al-Masroory with a deft first touch, to put it beyond Muşat with his second!
