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| FIXTURE HISTORY |
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| Season 62 | L | 1 - 4 | League | | Season 53 | W | 2 - 6 | Tournament (Group Phase) |
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Dining In
Safri Shoutout
Grilled outperformed splendidly to avoid automatic relegation at Fossil Park today, with their full complement of forwards pitching in for a repeat of last Sunday's impressive revival.
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim further extended his record of scoring in the Singapore leagues to twenty-one full seasons, which brought an emotional response from the squad.
There were few indications that it would have turned out so well for them beforehand - Ang Mo Kio hosts Club Dinosauria, while having lost their last two, were widely recognized to have the upper hand in raw midfield and attacking talent, with Ma Jing having scored on his last three outings with the national side.
Pundits had predicted a very sad outcome for the Birds if the Deinos captain were on fire, and Aussie head coach Mark Goldman was eager to lend him the required support, moving from the 2-5-3 to a 3-4-3 with an overloaded left wing. Grilled for their part were set up for a possession-based game, as they again left
Low Aik Jia on the bench, while deploying
Ang Leong Kum and
Clark Won as tucked-in wide men.
It definitely did not kick off as the home fans had envisaged, as
Rinor Isufi seized the initiative from the outset, refusing to allow Ma or Cheong Tse Jian the wherewithal to strut their stuff. Ciprian Maxim had his attention tested barely four minutes in, as Isufi waltzed through what appeared a packed right wing, before unleashing a deceptively powerful grounder headed straight for the opposite post.
If the Fossil Park faithful were waiting for Grilled's flash-in-the-pan to fizzle out, they would be disappointed. Against all expectations, the visiting Birds lasted, with Isufi shining by far the brightest as the match got going. He did have a spectacular miss in the 18th after getting everything else right, but a little later would have his run set
Yuta Nakakita up for a net-bulging bolt from the left.
Having catapulted Grilled into the lead, the Albanian finally began to slow, but
Tian Yonghang was on hand to take over the duty of driving Grilled's assault. While the Grilled skipper might not be as active as he had once been, his footballing brains had never been sharper, if his showstopping turn just as Boris Pedersen stepped in was any indication; that left a small window in which Maxim's far end of goal was exposed, and Tian knew exactly what he was doing, when he aimed his lob into that gap for 2-0.
This was not taken well at all by the spectators, and Deinos at last began to take it to the Birds; Chilean midfielder Eliacín Maripillán started to synchronize his pacey dribbles properly with his forwards, but a mix of fortunate positioning and incisive last-ditch tackling saw the Birds through to half-time, with lead solidly intact.
Deinos were too good to be held off indefinitely, though, and a much more even start to the second half saw them threaten
Valentin Batâr's goal with increasing frequency. It took all of
Gene Filippone's experience to hold them off as long as he did, but there was no stopping Miguel Ángel Gutiérrez de Solar's genius in the 60th minute. The covering
Yuki Irie blocked off Andy Dahm's path, only for an unlikely finish to come from the boot of stopper Paweł Michalczyk.
The hosts were regaining their ambitions at a rapid clip, and the order for
Tian Yonghang to withdraw in the 70th seemed unwise, given how the game was calling out for leadership. The Grilled fans need not have worried, as it turned out;
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim made his entrance with a flourish, lifting it in on the volley for a wondrous bicycle kick finish by the everpresent
Rinor Isufi.
The favour was returned soon enough, as Isufi burst through with his famed acceleration to lay it on for Mohd Safri, who obligingly reprised the arrangement with former partner Chow Ying Lee, that he had so often benefitted from. For the first time in a long, long while, the 37 year-old actually looked to be enjoying his football, as he raised both arms to the sky in celebration.
It was not over yet, as he got tripped by Adriaan van der Burg, on his next possession. Skeptics might have said that he left a leg out, but it was undeniable that contact had been made, and referee Stanisław Dziwisz had no option but to dole out the prescribed punishment - a penalty. After some deliberations,
Gennady Dvorak took on the responsibility, and fulfilled it with an unsaveable shot to the top left.
The visiting fans were singing on their feet by now, but
Djan Bacelar felt it was time to take it down a notch, and sent
Hoàng Trung Quá on for
Gene Filippone to take a few extra seconds off. Not that it mattered, as Deinos' final unorganized attacks went nowhere, but realistically the margin was far too large to be made up by this time.
