Heroes Without Capes
Six Versus Cabo
The Birds' new Trial of the My Road to the World Cup set had them smash six goals past a Cabo Verde 4-4-2 lineup, that went ahead despite the terrible condition of the pitch. The match had
Dan Alstani try out a 3-4-3 which basically had
Hisham Zubari playing ten yards deeper than normal, although it pretty much didn't change how Grilled usually operate.
Everardo Silva Basto channelled Vozinha in skippering the Cabo Verde team from goal, and while he might have had less success than his much more famous countryman here, the scoreline could have been much worse without him. 29 year-old Idálio Borges was their most important outfielder in taking central midfield, where he would however often be short on options. Strikers Josué Domingues and Gwenaël Gleyze seldom saw much of the ball, with the Birds pressing deep.
Cabo Verde did get to disrupt Grilled Birds early on as the latter adapted to Zubari's deeper-lying role, with the team being quite serious in staying with Alstani's tactical instructions. This did not affect their attacking potential when the ball got there, that said, as
Hwang Teck Fu proved with his eighteenth minute opener, after
Ananda Hettiarachchi had rampaged away from Jerónimo Luz.
A lapse in coverage had the hosts create their best chance of the day in the 22nd minute, with Borges forging ahead into empty space, before pulling it back for defender Celestino dos Santos to have a go. The well-struck drive rocked
Radomil Marcol's left post, but
Genki Nagano cleared immediately.
Chad Thach then carried on where he had left off against IFC Perspolis too, with a magnificent overhead kick that had even the local fans cheering.
It was 4-0 by half-time as
Chad Thach switched across and dribbled Dos Santos in the 38th minute, with Basto attempting to egg him into a bad shot, only to look a little silly as Thach simply took the ball past him as well. This was followed by a
Hisham Zubari special right before time ran out, with the midfielder-turned-defender unleashing from over twenty yards.
Alstani took the opportunity to remind his squad of the formation that they were supposed to be playing in, and this had Ananda and
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko finally look like a proper two-man midfield for the second half. Grilled would be slow to push forward, though, which did not change despite
Mohd Marzuki Khairul and
Lim An Keng coming on for Ananda and
Wu Ping De in the 60th minute.
They would only raise the tempo with about ten minutes left, with the catalyst being
Kendell El Khateeb's entry for
Chad Thach then. Thach had not been too active in seeking to complete his hat-trick, and Kendell was the complete opposite, as he went at João Veiga with the air of a man playing his last-ever football game. This resulted in the Birds' first real attempt since
Houssam Belhocine's almost-resigned try from an unreasonably tight angle in the 67th minute, that was in no danger of going in.
That lit a fire under the Cabo Verde team too, and rightback Hélder Ribeiro conjured up a magical crossfield beauty of a long pass in the 85th minute, that Gwenaël Gleyze sadly recognized a second too late. It was instead the Birds who scored a fifth goal on the return through
Mohd Marzuki Khairul, and
Kendell El Khateeb came very close after Grilled won it back from the restart - only for Basto to pull off a Vozinha-tier stop.
Hwang Teck Fu appeared to have converted from the save once more, but the referee would disallow the goal and book him for elbowing Manuel Cardoso in the back, which brought a cheeky wag of the finger from the Birds target man. Fortunately, the referee did have enough humour to ignore that, and he had no issues with
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko's strike in stoppage time, after
Phillip Nagata's poor luck continued with a great effort off the outside of the post.
