House Always Wins
Safri Subdued
Grilled's latest spree of seven wins in all competitions was broken by Swiss Division Two leaders Crowded House in the semifinals of the 1° Club World Cup, though they cut it close with a
Low Aik Jia-powered second half burst. Despite that,
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim's misses would eventually haunt the Birds, with two horror slips that could have turned the game around.
Crowded House were not leading their II.2 league undefeated without some serious credentials, which were built on their internationally-capped spine of Latvian striker Ilmārs Lācis, Scotsmen Lou Brown and Mick Franks in midfield, and Hungarian centreback Alex Feleki. Skippered by Italian player-coach Valerio Bellamoli at leftback, they were about as formidable an opposition as Grilled had ever faced.
This was just what the Birds had signed up for, and with
Zhu Changchun taking longer to recover than the medical staff had predicted, they went for
Zhao Jing Wei tucking in from the right. This arrangement kept them afloat against the battle-forged partnership of Brown and Franks, but a single lapse was all it took for Spanish winger Juan Riva to dart away from Zhao, then come back inside to notch the opener.
Grilled responsed in the only way they knew, which was to attack, and they nearly pegged Crowded House back right from the restart. The Birds' undisguised directness was unorthodox in its own way, and led to a two-on-one against Feleki as Mohd Safri brought it up in a straight line. Somehow, he neglected to simply lay it off to
Chow Ying Lee for a probable score after Feleki decided to go at him, and wound up smacking it against the defender's legs.
Chow had hardly had the time to complain, when the red-and-black striped House team swarmed ahead. It was the Birds' turn to come under fire, and unfortunately for them, Bulgarian forward Onur Betik would make the right choice when confronted by
Ling Fuquan. With
Gene Filippone struggling to keep up with Lācis, Betik pulled it slightly back to the onrunning Wietse Ruiter, who sent a precise grounder past the stranded
Wong Tian Han.
Grilled were not shy about cutting loose, but with Crowded House goalkeeper Imre Török also in the mood, batting a stiff effort from
Wong Ping Shun aside in the 33rd, their future looked dark indeed. They were at least let off the hook when Mick Frank's incredible piledriver from over thirty feet, struck immediately after dispossessing
Lee Lee Hao, drifted wide at the last second with
Wong Tian Han nowhere near.
With little indication during the first fifteen minutes of the second half that Grilled had what it took to mount a comeback, assistant coach Luis Alcántara made the gamble of replacing the ineffective
Zhao Jing Wei with natural winger
Low Aik Jia - who reshaped the game utterly upon his entrance.
A single dazzling run was enough to convince Riva to fall back, and Grilled suddenly had the room they needed to move and plot.
Clément Meyer, who had had Brown constantly breathing down his neck previously, was finally free to glance about with the ball, and soon released a perfect through ball for
Tian Yonghang to finish up.
Emboldened by this, Grilled began hitting it about more crisply than before, with
Low Aik Jia of course more than happy to run it at the defence. Having passed Massimiliano Borgianini with unnerving ease in the 69th minute, he then switched play over to the right side, allowing
Wong Ping Shun to bypass the thinned House backline and tap it on for
Chow Ying Lee to equalize.
What had appeared like a one-sided affair had been completely shaken up by the Birds' supersub, but this injection of purpose did not hold much longer. Now without anything to chase, they settled all too willingly back into a wait-and-see routine, to the frustration of the fired-up Low.
This would prove their undoing, as the Birds' not quite award-winning defence lost their way a bare few minutes after their hard-won leveller. Low was, quite understandably, engaged in trying to break through, and could not be counted on to help when Riva bore down on his flank. Meyer and Filippone appeared to be waiting on each other to get across, but neither did before Riva had threaded in an accurate low cross for Brown to thump Crowded House back into the lead.
Still, the Birds could have forced extra-time, but such hopes disintegrated when
Mohd Safri bin Mohd Kassim fired way over after being presented with a gaping goal by
Tian Yonghang's distraction run. The former international looked suitably disgusted at himself for that, but that would have no bearing on the final result.
