Panthers Disassembled
Him & His
Grilled Birds' return to the Dominion International Cup tournament would be marked by a 7-1 hiding of Welsh II.1 club Pendre Panthers in the first round of the group fixtures, as the Panthers found the going hard after promoting in straight seasons. Israeli goalkeeper Muhammad Dabbour, who had just made his official debut for his new club in a 0-4 away loss to Queens Pork Ban, found
Raúl Himadas and
Hisham Zubari irrepressible, as they combined for a total of five goals against him today.
Other than Dabbour, fellow new signing and recent Faroese U-20 midfield star Sólbjørn Thomasen would feature too, with the Welsh side also featuring the uncommon pairing of a Taiwanese right winger with a mainland Chinese left winger. Chen Qiting and Fu Qibin got on famously from all accounts, however, and the locals were loud in their cheering of the "
Qi bros".
The wingers would not be given much opportunity to strut their stuff, as they soon found out, with Grilled Birds' 2-5-3 the more clinical by some distance in this mirror match.
Lim An Keng found Curaçao playmaker Roly Kuwas a bit of a weak link in the Panthers midfield defensively at least, and blew past him in the fourth minute to open. Former Breton fella's FC man Dennis Pugh made to give back as good as his team got on the restart, and actually came quite close to troubling
Radomil Marcol.
There would then be a calmer period as the Birds reverted to a more-conservative possession game, but Spanish defender
Raúl Himadas would for one not be able to restrain himself from bombing forward, which he did very successfully in the 22nd and 29th minutes for a brace within half an hour. In between,
Chad Thach ran onto
Phillip Nagata's breaking ball with the Panthers expecting an offside call that never came, which meant that Grilled Birds were 4-0 up at the break.
The game restarted on a more even footing, with Pendre Panthers really too good of a side to be beaten down so one-sidedly.
Hisham Zubari teased signs of impending brilliance with his output from the left, but it would be the opponents to score first for the second half. Chen Qiting scooped a cross long in the 69th minute following his skipping past Nagata, and Fu Qibin calmly cushioned it down after
Genki Nagano missed it, before slotting it to the far post as Marcol dived in.
That was also it for an underperforming
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko, with
Aw Keng Chuan taking over, and having an immediate impact. Zubari was there when Rolf Schönhofer overran the ball in trying to shake
Mohd Marzuki Khairul off, and ended up looking a little silly as the Birds winger slipped inside for an easy 5-1. Two minutes later,
Hwang Teck Fu's fall in the box had
Raúl Himadas apparently offer the penalty to
Hisham Zubari, which the latter politely turned down; three it was for the Spanish regular set-piece taker, then!
Zubari would prove well capable of scoring for himself in any case, as he placed a lob neatly past Muhammad Dabbour in the 78th minute, not long after
Phillip Nagata's highlight dribble past Kuwas that had the goalkeeper scrambling to make the save.
Chia Kwang Tse replaced
Hwang Teck Fu for the final ten minutes, but the work had already been done.
