Bencak Bat Six
Goričanec From The Right
Grilled's reserves were massacred in their visit to Slovenia, where they shipped half a dozen goals to Division Three hosts NŠ Bencak. Like Grilled once a top division side fallen on relatively hard times, there was however no comparing the wingers at their disposal, and the duo of Adam Goričanec and Lodovico Rizza more or less dismantled the Birds by themselves.
The gap in ability between those two, and near everyone else on the pitch, was so wide that it might as well have been men against boys - which, then again, was a fair description of most of Grilled's players. While brimming with youthful energy, they were still heavily lagging in upper-body development, which the Bencaks exploited as often as they could with their in-your-backs marking habits.
Goričanec for one was absolutely shredding poor
Dante Tran down his flank, with the 19 year-old simply unable to measure up to him in any aspect. His teammates did what they could to chip in and help out, but there was no stopping Goričanec racing clear with a smooth stop-and-start in the seventh minute.
Rashid bin Ahmad kept himself close to Uruguayan player-coach Mauro Vargas, to no avail as Vargas slammed a first-time volley over
Krystian Rykowski's reach.
This had Rashid personally moving over to stem the leak, which would unavoidably leave holes in the middle. A series of brief raids midway through the half would see Bencak three goals up, with veteran former national star Vlado Riga first tapping home from Flavio Egiaian's pick-out. Egiaian then scored a disputed one, as he seemed to break early off
Jérémy Tarin's shoulder, but the linesman played the advantage there.
The outcome was never in doubt, and Luis Alcántara took
Islom Davlatov - one of the few who had moments to match Goričanec - off at half-time, ostensibly to protect Grilled's Uzbek main striker. Replacement
Leong Wan Kang was interestingly probably better for this matchup, though, as his trademark dogged chasing-down unsettled Bencak to an extent.
The home team soon found their feet once more, though, and Grilled's fifteen minutes of battling on near-level terms soon came to an end.
Prokop Mottl's indecisiveness on the turn cost them their best shot at a consolation pop, and Rizza was off down the left side after that. Riga, with the experience born of over thirty caps, staked the cross out cleverly, but his right-footed swing turned out to be slightly off-kilter.
A couple of very near misses from Romanian Ovidiu Bumbuc then followed, as he rotated himself up to his accustomed forward position. He pulled away from an otherwise above-average
Kalki Parvathaneni in the 67th minute to rip one past
Krystian Rykowski, which only just came back off the far post. Rykowski would not be humbled on Bumbuc's next try just four minutes later, and met his powerful effort with a stiff two-handed punch into touch.
This would be Goričanec's call to do it by himself, which he did in the 79th and 80th minutes. First, he threw the Grilled backline into disarray by palming the ball off on Wilko Dooms, before scooting inside and nodding home the ensuing cross. And, to further stamp it in, he repeated the trick the very next minute, going in over
Rashid bin Ahmad to crash Bencak's fifth through Rykowski's guard.
It was indeed a very harsh induction into the pro ranks for the debuting
Chirag Thevar, who barely ever got out of the Bencak defenders' pockets. He wouldn't finish the match either, as he took the full brunt of Jean-Noël Godefroy's sliding challenge. Both parties recognized that there was no malice in it, but Thevar would be off nonetheless, giving
Leonard Nguyen an in. Tarin went for broke from the free-kick, but didn't trouble Giorgio Ferri any.
There were some ugly scenes as Lodovico Rizza berated the referee after that, for repeatedly calling him out for encroachment. A yellow card only inflamed the Italian further, and it was only prompt action from Vargas and a few others, that prevented him from being sent off. Bumbuc then finally got what he had come so close to so often, coming up in Goričanec's wake to score.
