Kateeder Kept Away
Surge Continues
There's no stopping
Chow Ying Lee as he scored for the third non-tournament game in a row, to lift the Birds to a 4-3 win over Estonian Division Two side Idiootide Kateeder. In an acknowledgement that the defence needs a lot more work, Luis Alcántara plumped for four at the back for a change, with the error-prone
Hilal Bakhtiar relegated to rightback as
Gleb Dorogan and
Djan Bacelar took up the reins.
The visitors would stick with the traditional 4-4-2, and centered their game around the midfield triumvirate of Toivo Sõber, Heigo Lemming and Giuseppe Lianas. Chilean striker Rüdiger Lachenschmid was their main target, with his teenaged Vietnamese partner Nguyễn Cao Cường starting only his fourth match as a professional.
The Birds didn't take long to stir the 5400-strong weekday crowd up, as they dragged out their first spell of possession before
Chow Ying Lee took on Kateeder captain Gunnar Veiler one-to-one. The 41 year-old did very well to force Chow wide, but couldn't stop him from laying it off to
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim, who had opportunistically darted inside.
Still, it was Kateeder who controlled more of the game, as the Birds had issues in bringing lone striker
Leong Wan Kang into play. Their backline wasn't exactly too impressive either, as Lachenschmid showed in the 34th minute by turning Dorogan and swatting an inbound low pass beyond
Hovaness Noubaryan.
The right side was their Achilles' heel, however, with debutant winger Valmar Koidula understandably clueless on how to protect Veiler. His flank let in two in succession, with Chow and then
Low Aik Jia overpowering Veiler with their considerable pace each time. It was not for want of trying, though, and the youngster took a hard one to the calf in racing Low, which brought the latter a card.
That barely slowed Grilled, as Chow then got his second goal three minutes before half-time, on this occasion swinging by the centre to get on the end of a lazy chip by
Tian Yonghang. Kateeder actually had the upper hand for the half, but clinical finishing made all the difference.
They began to correct that oversight slowly after the break, and Veiler got his own back soon after the restart, after the letdown that was his first forty-five minutes. Lachenschmid held it up expertly as Nguyễn took Bacelar aside, leaving the Kateeder skipper to blow in and make it 4-2.
Koidula improved too as the rest helped measurably with his composure, and he made his first big contribution when he shimmied past
Colby Awyong in the 62nd minute, before immediately squaring. Lachenschmid was following the developments with interest, and lapped up the cross with a mighty header that came off the underside of the crossbar.
It was a completely open affair by now, and Bacelar narrowly skied a free-kick, before Nguyễn missed a great chance to equalise; nobody was onto him when Lemming put him through, but he inexplicably slowed, allowing
Gleb Dorogan the couple of seconds that he needed to catch up and block him.
Bacelar then had an excellent counterattacking effort saved by Reinold Vana, before Kateeder again responded, with Koidula really growing into the game. The 17 year-old strode with assurance down the right, only for the relentless Chow to take him out by sliding in from the side. The tackle brought ire from the visiting bench, and the referee quickly booked Chow to defuse the situation as Rene Steffensen replaced the limping lad.
That turned out to be the last real action of the friendly, with the visitors thereafter reduced to long-range attempts, as
Walter Ross got a run-out in place of Awyong for the last five minutes.
