Birds Bricked
Chan Consolation
With Grilled Birds already having secured fourth place, this final-day clash at HEBFC Tonners FC's stadium held little meaning for them, other than heralding a likely first Golden Boot for
Chan Ze Han. The Tonners though were still in the running for the title, and the difference in attitude was hard to miss. Following an initial setback, they would roar back late in the first half, and maintain their vigour up to the end - only to miss out as LKS FC edged it in the other relevant fixture.
It was all set up for Chan to claim individual honours on the Birds' side, with
Chad Thach and
Lim An Keng lining up in advanced midfield positions, relying on
Aw Keng Chuan to hold the line. This would be matched like-for-like by Balasubramanian Teja and Yong Siong Eng for the Tonners, with the head-on battle between fellow national youth team stars Thach and Teja creating fireworks soon enough.
Some tetchy opening exchanges would eventually develop into a good spell of possession for the visiting Birds, and
Bilal Mohammad Harun would test Andrea Migliozzi with a punt on the move in the twelfth minute, but the Italian goalie was onto it. Instead, it would be Yong to draw first blood in the 23rd minute as he climbed above Lim to get something on Gabriel Mazo Calvo's cross - which however would be followed immediately by an Aw equalizer, with the Grilled Number Four putting his full weight behind a drive, after Chan's free-kick had come back off the wall.
Chan certainly wasn't discouraged by that not going his way, and a second effort on the stroke of the 30th minute gave the Birds the lead, as it whirled over Othman Hariry's leap, to nestle in at the far post. This was Grilled's peak as far as this game was concerned, and even had Tan Tse Kok busy defending - and getting booked for a rough tackle - for a bit. Tan would be back leading the line soon enough, that said, and his corner kick in the 37th minute was fumbled by
Dimitris Germanakos, leaving Mats Verslype not believing his luck.
That made it two-all, and the Tonners didn't pause to bask in their goal, as they drove Grilled deep into their own half on the ensuing press. Calvo had been having the run of the right wing against a defensively-suspect
Enrique Baena, and with all those crosses getting through, it could not have been long before another got converted - which Slovakian winger Michal Balkovič did in the 41st minute. It was Grilled's turn to try to mount a response, but
Egemen Dinçer Ferzan's excellent dribble was too obvious in the end, and he would not be allowed any clearance to shoot.
Half-time saw
Kalki Parvathaneni replacing
Moey Xin Seng,
Chan Ze Han still well in the lead for the Golden Boot, and LKS FC tied 1-1 with the Merlions - which meant that the Tonners were champions as things were. Their supporters were unsurprisingly in full voice as the announcer emphasized that last, and their players found another gear with glory at hand. Yong threw off the shackles as he blazed a path between Grilled's defenders with abandon, and put it past Germanakos but four minutes into the new half.
Grilled were still hanging in that at this point, if clearly flagging against the Tonners' supercharged motivation.
Lim An Keng was never one to be cowed by the opposition, and he set off on a quite incredible run that should have the Young Lions setup take notice - only for Migliozzi to bail his team out with his incredible speed at going to ground. Tan Tse Kok then widened the Tonners' lead to 5-2 at the other end, to which a resigned
Tian Yonghang put
Gilbert Webb on for
Bhavya Panigrahi.
Migliozzi might have taken a knock, or perhaps given the three-goal lead, Tonners boss Li Woon Kok was simply saving him for a probable promotion match, as he pulled him off for German backup Eliot Frankenfeld in the 65th. This would accompany some terrible news from Tanglin, unfortunately: Frode Haugen had just put LKS FC in front from an incisive counterattack, which meant that the Tonners were down to second place.
It was not like the Tonners could do anything about this development, and as such they wisely focused on their own game, which had
Bilal Mohammad Harun fluffing a moderately easy finish against Frankenfeld, three minutes after the latter had come on. Bilal would go off himself for
Gandhik Chitre with fifteen minutes left, and although Balasubramanian Teja brought the partisan crowd more cheer with an excellent lobbed finish on their next move, the much-awaited leveller from the Merlions would never arrive.
