Conquered In Turn
The Grilled squad was happy to spend more time in the Phnom Penh area, with
Iman Eshrafi for one delighted at how far his dollar stretched. "This is the life! We should do this more often."
Goalkeeper
Dan Seng was seen hitting it off with his opposition counterpart Giuseppe Ghetta following the match, and Seng would remark that he thought Ghetta had done a fabulous job. "I've been a end of more than a few hopeless causes myself, so I know how it feels."
His Farmer Bunnies analog
Akıner Sayın would have to go off after 39 minutes against Azerbaijan club Muhasebe Spor, leaving 39 year-old veteran
Cheong Kong Ting to fill the hole. This Cheong did adequately, though he in truth had little to do, with the Bunnies defence outstanding in a 4-0 whitewash.
Abderahim Bentellis and
Milán Bolgár finished off well-crafted moves before Sayın's departure, while
Jon Benson and
Kwek Yun Jie killed off an overreaching Muhasebe as time ran down. That said, it was scant consolation with the Buns having just fallen in turn to FC Platax in the Mönninghof Cup, as Grilled Birds had done before them.
They were certainly a lot better defending in a 5-3-2, but a hotly-debated 50th minute penalty, converted by Absalom Ahmed, was all it took to tip the game Platax's way. Ahmed would then supply a corner for Robert Opara to make it 2-0, which was immediately answered by
Sofian Azfar in almost exactly the same manner.
Julien Delay would seize upon a rare misjudgment from
Morgan Hu in the 79th minute, though, and despite the Buns' frantic attempts to make it up, which eventually brought a counterstrike via
Vishnu Tallapaka with three minutes remaining, it was not enough.
Tham Leng Teck could only give FC Platax full credit. "We had prepared heavily for this, but they were too good for any simple tricks. Best of luck to them in the final."
