Liverbirds Lashed
Chow From Anywhere
Grilled recorded a thumping nine goals without reply against Hong Kong visitors Liverpool Football Club (1892), a scoreline belying their glorious history that includes four national league titles and two Hong Kong Cups. Since their golden period some eight seasons ago, Liverpool have fallen steadily through the ranks, even playing in Division Five last season, but are currently on an eight match undefeated streak in competitive games as they raise a new generation of stars.
The Birds are somewhat further along in this process, as they started out with
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim and
Tian Yonghang in midfield, alongside yesterday's surprise signing
Woon Shun An. Liverpool in return lined up with five at the back, all aged younger than 21, an arrangement that was sure to have Grilled's more experienced cohort salivating.
The hosts didn't take long to get going, and Italian forward
Pompeo Bellamoli showed his adaptability by seamlessly yielding his position to Tian, and then getting it back from him before charging past the middle defenders and slotting it in. Bellamoli caught Lui Chaojian painfully on the shin in the process, and Lui hobbled on for eight more minutes before Israeli coach Eliezer Valdman put him out of his misery and summoned Ha Kaifeng as a replacement.
That mad little difference in the larger sweep of things, with veteran goalie Yuan Shuangguo heavily overworked. Yuan did well to push a precise free-kick by
Mayur Gudivada over the bar, but was helpless when Mohd Safri, who had been given the captain's armband, came in from deep to sear a powerful effort into the net.
Hilal Bakhtiar then tried to get in the act, but was pulled up for an apparent dive, before
Shiya Shaahee continued to get into gear with a sharp goal born of diligence coming in from the left.
Three-nil was a more-or-less accurate reflection of the proceedings, which had Grilled nearly always on the offensive, and there was more to come in the second half.
Chow Ying Lee, already level with Mohd Safri in the league scoring stakes, was full of energy when he high-fived
Tang Hengcai and stepped onto the pitch, and he took only six minutes after his substitution to score, outpacing Koo Zhiyu rather embarrassingly despite the former having a few metres on him.
Woon Shun An embellished his Grilled debut with a goal, thanks to Chow brimming with danger, drawing men to himself and leaving the entire right side empty for the strong midfielder to gallop in and shoot. Gudivada, now available for transfer, had seemed slightly lost playing far further up front than he was used to, but reacted quickly enough to Shaahee's imploring pass to misguide Yuan for the sixth.
Chow was the undoubted standout of the second half as the Liverpool defenders simply couldn't handle his raw speed; the former youth international obligingly tapped his large reserves of unused stamina and made them look like schoolboys at times - which some of them, to be fair, were. Two more came from Chow to make a hat-trick for the forward, who may have made a case for
Niculae Stanca to consider starting him from wide right.
Bellamoli, who got all this started, then ended on the same high note with a deft flick for 9-0 in the 79th minute, before oldies
Alex Fonseca and
Yvan Lefébure made late appearances.
