Dante Downs Wolves
Teter On Tap
The Birds returned to Haiti after three seasons for this week's friendly test, and bested III.1 hosts Wolves7 in a frankly somewhat underwhelming display. Still, it did afford several underutilized players such as
Heng Dong Chu,
Sølve Lunde and
Gilbert Webb an opportunity to stretch their legs, although the latter two will surely be disappointed at the Wolves managing to breach their defences twice.
Bearing links to Romania's Metalu7 and Greece's AlMeFC, Wolves have steadily improved their position in the league through the past three seasons, are are currently on six straight competitive wins after a huge reshuffling of their squad about the end of September. That saw previous favourites such as Konstantinos Yianikakis and Rodrigo Valle y Cappellini depart, and an influx of upcoming young midfielders such as Eduardo Becerra, Wiktor Figlak and Erke Geldigitti amongst others. None of those would feature today, though, with Cyryl Żeber opting for the teenaged trio of Bert Droege, Boyazid Erkinov and Silas Flueckiger to hold the fort.
Their youthful energy actually didn't do at all badly, with
Teo Chuan Yong the only Grilled starter who clearly outclassed them in that department, and their eager snapping at heels would severely limit the number of chances created by the Birds. With two men perpetually on Teo, they would manage to hold the worst off until the 34th minute, when Heng finally forced his way in down the left side. A cute backheel by
Atang Mangoye then had
José Luiz Velho in an ideal position to shoot... only for Bicou Almoza to get his body in the way, and Georges Monplaisir to open at the other end from the clearance and chase.
That had the Wolves' tails up, but they would not have it easy as the half wound to a conclusion. Erkinov would be cynical beyond his tender years as he kicked the ball into the stands to keep the Birds from pressing their advantage in the 40th minute, and while he would be booked for the act, it was hard to dislike his taking one for the team there; not to say that it hobbled Grilled for long, as
Teo Chuan Yong banged the equalizer in after they had gotten back settled.
Dante Tran then flirted with a cheap goal on the Birds' following indirect free-kick, and missed - but it wouldn't have counted anyway. His time had yet to come, after all.
Dante Tran would grow steadily into his role in the next half, helped probably by the Wolves' hard pressing falling off, and his at time unorthodox approach would work in his favour in the 57th minute. Most other player would have gone one way or the other against two defenders, but Tran would knock it between them without a second thought, and had barged through before either could react. Almoza came out for it, but Tran found the corner.
Wolves were back level within three minutes as Teter - their best overall performer - got a foot on Adriano Röllin's delivery from the right, which was frankly a divinely-inspired piece of finishing. Grilled's immediate reply would come from
Cameron Law drilling it marginally wide from the edge of the penalty area, before Tran went at it again. With the defence standing off him this time, Grilled's Number 44 would hack it hard from fifteen yards, and watch it swerve to avoid the goalie's clutches.
Toma Tamiya would nip in to snag a fourth in the 69th minute, right before
Moey Xin Seng relieved Teo of both his midfield role and the captaincy, together with
Leonard Nguyen taking over
Atang Mangoye. Toma would go off himself just before full-time for
Kohei Okuya, but the game was dead some ways before that.
