Arth In Turn
Zubari Push
Grilled Birds hosted Groningen's I.G.V. Arth for the penultimate round of the World Battle tournament, and recorded a 6-2 win against the long-established club. It was another distinctive clash of styles as Nelis van 't Hoog set his team up for the counter, after a minor slump following a long KNVB Beker national cup run to the Round of 32, where they were finally stopped by league rivals De Chirurgijnen.
This had club hero and former U-21 World Cup champion Jermaine Aalten lead the defence together with Liechtenstein international Nikolaus Gufler, with Belgian Séverin Parmentier possibly a little out of the place in that august company. Fullbacks Tomasz Gilowski and Raymond Gregoraci brought their own caps, as Italian star Gustavo Ippolito headed up their strikeforce. In goal, S$22 million man Simon Pariset started as usual, with Indian national winger Sanket Bagh captaining the constellation of stars.
Houssam Belhocine has by all accounts established himself as
Genki Nagano's new permanent partner with
Lim An Keng and
Mohd Marzuki Khairul benched, as
Hisham Zubari returned to central midfield for the day. The match started with a bang as Aalten conjured some of the magic that had seen him routinely nominated for the Dutch national team, and nobody could have foreseen the delivery he made for Muhammet Tevfik Gezgin, while dodging
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko's approach in the second minute. That included Gezgin, unfortunately for Arth, from how the ball bounced off his foot and to a grateful
Radomil Marcol.
It would soon transpire that Séverin Parmentier had been tasked to follow
Chad Thach wherever he went, which made for a tedious outing for the Birds striker. Grilled made little headway against the alert Arth backline until the 22nd minute, when
Wu Ping De finally got on the inside of former Maltese youth international Raymond Gregoraci, but hit it high. Two minutes later, it was Icelandic midfielder Róbert Vignisson's turn to get in behind, but his race against
Genki Nagano ended in the latter's favour.
The match was really crying out for a goal about now, and although Grilled Birds had gotten most of the possession, it was Arth to strike first - and not even on the counter. A relatively long span with the ball saw it distributed wide left to Milo Valentin, who teased
Phillip Nagata before sprinting by. The Birds were caught shorthanded at the back with Valentin's incursion, and Muhammet Tevfik Gezgin knew exactly what to expect this time, as he nicked it beyond Marcol first-time.
Hisham Zubari was clearly riled up by the lapse, and he demonstrated his distaste in the most direct possible way, by overturning the visitors' lead within the next six minutes. The first of those was near-Maradonaesque as he eased his way past three men before squeezing his drive low past Pariset; he then possibly topped that four minutes on, as he received
Ananda Hettiarachchi's languid square ball over twenty yards out, and looped it over the goalkeeper in one swift motion.
That had the Arth supporters sitting stunned, and Bagh doing all he could to rouse his fellows towards a response. This wouldn't come off, however, as Ananda assisted
Genki Nagano following a risky rush from the restart. Grilled then managed to add a fourth goal before half-time, with
Hwang Teck Fu keeping his grounder on target despite heavy pressure from the encroaching Nikolaus Gufler.
The tournament game got back going with I.G.V. Arth still maintaining their low block, though this did finally work as intended for them about the 53rd minute. Belhocine had wandered entirely too far afield, if encouraged by his teammates' coverage, but they were all undone by how swiftly Arth moved it back up from the right. Milo Valentin had switched over to earn a free run on
Radomil Marcol, and he did not disappoint with a confident swivel to the goalie's outside for 4-2.
Well, the Birds would not take long at all to restore a three-goal advantage, as
Chad Thach won it back from Róbert Vignisson, after the midfielder had done so well to intercept Grilled's previous pass. Four minutes later, it was
Hwang Teck Fu with his second goal of the day, as he followed up on
Chia Kwang Tse's blast right by the book. Just as well, as the shot came back off the post, and Hwang had enough strength to weather Jermaine Aalten and score.
There would be a few more openings after that, the most noteworthy of which was
Chad Thach's crazy attempt to dribble himself out of trouble deep inside the Birds box, which required
Houssam Belhocine to eventually clean up by booting it behind.
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko then put it marginally over in the 68th minute, and Simon Pariset denied
Hwang Teck Fu his hat-trick, with a near point-blank save in the 76th.
