Eller Licked
No Moey They Said
Kuwaiti Division Two side TSV Eller 1967 (AO) saw their second team flattened mercilessly by the visiting Birds, with their esteemed strikeforce getting next to zero service from the rest of the team. Though Grilled's lineup was far from optimal too, the interchanging they were capable of was enough to thoroughly take over the friendly.
Eller's homegrown Rahman Balagh set some hearts aflutter with his activity early on, but the very fact that none of his runs even neared Grilled's area had to tell. Touches would soon get very infrequent as the Birds forged ahead untroubled, and
Vikram Mudaliar would be set up by
Neeraj Muthyala in the 25th, before promptly returning the favour with a knockdown.
It was akin to a training exercise against Eller's helpless veterans, who had the unpalatable choice of pacing themselves, or gassing out prematurely. Not that it made much difference from how
Islom Davlatov cut beyond 40 year-old Englishman Daniel Douglas as if he wasn't there to score in the 32nd minute, with
Iman Eshrafi putting his instincts to good use for the fourth, several minutes later.
Eshrafi was almost too into it, as he then drew a reaction from the home fans for needlessly holding up the restart, an act which got him booked.
Moey Xin Seng would then take over, crashing in a corner and following it up with a delightful chip over Andreas Jörg Eduard Klich, before Mudaliar struck another negative note with his clumsy lunge out at Gerhard Berwind.
The stands appeared somewhat thinner for the second half, as some spectators decided that they had seen enough. They might have been right in their assessment, as the footballing quality dipped further. After a long period of lazy dawdling, in which
Hoàng Trung Quá's eyebrow-raising try from outside the box before being substituted was the pick of a bad lot,
Islom Davlatov finally woke the match back up, nearly making it from thirty-over yards.
The Birds were evidently reminded that there was still some time to go, and
José Luiz Velho won out in a long-drawn duel against Enrique Murillo down the left in the 81st minute, and worked it into a great chance that
Kalki Parvathaneni did justice to. Next up,
Moey Xin Seng completed his hat-trick, after being left free by the pivoting backline.
An ugly bust-up in which Ihab Mahfouz and
Islom Davlatov seized upon each other followed, in which they were fortunately more quickly separated by more-sensible teammates. Davlatov would then shrug off his booking with a ninth in injury time, which might have left the Eller skipper stewing at the unfairness of it all.
