Germane Dissection
Angry Assaf
The Birds started off in the Worldwide Allgäu-Guests III tournament with a bang, as they offed current Lebanese top division leaders paris saint germain eddy five to nothing. Although eddy were captained by national legend Nassar Hadad, Grilled simply swamped their optimistic two-man midfield, and not even having former U-20 mainstay Hadi Khatib in goal could keep them from going in.
eddy were no strangers to the contest, having participated in a previous incarnation, and were brimming with confidence after three huge wins in the Al Dawry Al Aam Al Lubnani, all by five goals or more. Add that to a ten-match winning streak, and it was well understandable why they were considered by most neutrals to have the upper hand going into this game.
Grilled were not exactly slouches either, though, and their cause was probably helped by the blanketing rain. While this of course hindered all present to an extent, it had the biggest impact on Hadad, whose superior mobility had a big role in his 58 national caps. Robbed of that, eddy's gameplan was fatally hobbled, as the rough-and-ready
Woon Shun An and
Wong Ping Shun revelled down the right.
The movements were at times painful to watch in these terrible conditions, and
Zhu Changchun's goal in the 25th minute will probably not be remembered for long, scrappy as it was. It was possible simply that no-one else saw the ball under the thick layer of mud, although
Abdul bin Jantan did manage some neat dribbling to set it up.
There was then a potential flashpoint when
Chow Ying Lee went in hard from the back on Romanian defender Cătălin Fântâneanu, which would have warranted a red from many referees. However, Aren Knutsen took into account the slipperiness of the ground, and downgraded it to a yellow, to Chow's relief.
The Birds then knocked two in from nowhere, with
Tian Yonghang playing a role in both; first off, his trip in the 38th minute earned a free-kick, which he took immediately for
Abdul bin Jantan to put in. eddy protested to no avail, and were bitten again when Tian let loose a long-distance stinger that rebounded off the crossbar, but only to
Wong Ping Shun.
The eddy team were not pleased by this development, and some of their players remonstrated with Knutsen as they trudged back to the dressing room at half-time. This did not change the scoreline, however, and by the looks of it Grilled were well on the way to all three points.
There was no letup in the rain, and the disappointing mudbath carried on, to the extent that
Low Aik Jia for once looked slightly reluctant to take over Abdul on the hour mark. Low certainly wouldn't be able to find much joy against Ludolf Laurent on this ground, and ended up with his face in the dirt more than once.
Professionals all, the participants continued pecking away to the bitter end, and
Tian Yonghang forced a good save out of Khatib in the 79th minute. Rightback Salim Assaf, who had just won his first international U-20 cap last week, was unhappy as he thought that Tian had pushed him off the ball in the buildup, and retaliated with a rather obvious shove the next time they met. Unsurprisingly, he was noticed and booked.
Assaf's temper didn't get any better, as first Mohd Safri and then Tian scored in the following minutes, and he gave full vent to his emotions, by sliding in on Tian. That looked more than a little personal, and his teammates rushed over to usher him off even before the referee reached the scene of the crime.
There was time left for
Woon Shun An to blast a last effort, but as has happened all too often for him in recent weeks, the goalkeeper got to it.
