Academy Cooldown
On A High
With the S-League title secured, Grilled Birds had it all to look forward to for the weekend, but there would first be the little matter of a little friendly against San Marino III.1 visitors, Cool Ones Academy. A spinoff of Denmark's Cool Ones, the Academy had promoted in their first season, but were finding the competition somewhat harder, a level above; with them trailing nine points behind leaguewinners San Marino Tigers, head coach Narcís Redolat is already looking towards the next season.
Having settled upon assembling a collection of veterans as his starters, Redolat would showcase some relative greenhorns here, with homegrown wingers Pier Federico Tantera and Mattia Petricola perhaps their focus. There would remain plenty of experience to go around, foremost amongst them 38 year-old Spanish captain Dimas Barcula, and Norwegian central midfielder Einar Theodorsen was undoubtedly their lynchpin in a traditional 4-4-2.
Standing across Barcula and Theodorsen would however be the indefatigable
Bilal Mohammad Harun, who had been honoured with the armband for the day, and the likes of
Salah Kamel,
Teo Chuan Yong,
Bernie Egan and
Gilbert Webb, all on the fringes of the Grilled first team. All eyes would, however, rightly be on the near-two metre tall debutant
Sølve Lunde, Grilled's most-expensive defender ever, as he lumbered in behind Webb. The Scotsman was a tall one himself, but he would still be noticeably shaded by Lunde, when standing side-by-side.
The four thousand-strong crowd at The Cooking Pot were unmistakeably out to enjoy themselves, with the serious business done with, and there would be dozens of inflatable trophies bouncing about the grandstand as the players lined up. The players were of like mind, and had they showboated any more than they did, it could have been construed as disrespectful to the visiting team. The gap in quality was big enough that the Birds were never in any real danger, though, and Bilal would make it 1-0 from
Radovan Jaška's incursion from the left, in the 17th minute.
The rest of the half followed much the same pattern with Grilled pushing forward, if not in a too-disciplined manner. A messy Lennard Pol tackle on Teo punished by a yellow card aside, it was goals galore as Mottl, Egan and then Velho scored, with
Wu Jinglong dragging what would have been the pick of the lot just wide. Roberto Bizzini would set off in injury time as Pol's ball out of defence was narrowly missed by Lunde, but the newcomer was in luck, as
Cameron Law stepped up with the save.
Kalki Parvathaneni came on for
Wu Jinglong for the second half, and though the game swiftly went off the boil, there would be a couple more goals in it for the Birds;
Teo Chuan Yong would take a rare free-kick in the 64th, and from the stunning curler that hit the underside of the bar for a fifth goal, he should perhaps be taking rather more of them. Bilal would then clean up a lengthy sequence in the opposition box, as
Yuta Nakakita and
Yee Jian Hui made late, nondescript entries.
