Yk Into The Red
Taban Defiance
Today's friendly saw Grilled Birds host Iranian IV.35 club Red Yk, who had to get over an early rampage by the hosts before attaining some semblance of stability. They would continue to operate under heavy siege, only to come out on top for the second half, as they avoided conceding any more goals in part thanks to some very questionable finishing.
Prokop Mottl would start in attack today with Velho on the long-term injured list, with playmaker
Chad Thach given a go at centre forward. This left
Egemen Dinçer Ferzan to shoulder most of the burden of carrying the ball into the Reds' defence, and although it got more and more difficult as the visitors adapted, he had some good success at it earlier on. A particularly strong drive in the 19th minute saw Kourosh Parsi unable to get out of the way in time, and Czech defender
Radovan Jaška stepped up to send Salar Madadian the wrong way from the spot.
That had been coming, and the Birds would add two more in the next seven minutes, to raise the possibility of an embarassing final score;
Paulino Trindade had been doing quite well on the left side too, and he would supply first a high cross for
Chia Kwang Tse in the 22nd minute, and then a low one towards
Chad Thach in the 26th. Thach might not be a natural striker, but he took that last in his stride smoothly enough!
It then went to pieces for the Birds' strikeforce, as they fluffed two sitters after
Atang Mangoye's speculative grounder got blocked by Salar Madadian. Thach and Chia were both eager to add to their haul, but despite being confronted with easier chances than they had already scored from, they couldn't keep their shots down. Chia's miss then led to the visitors' first true counter of the day, from which Austrian midfielder Oliver Egelseder rattled one off the outside of the post.
Lim An Keng would make his entrance replacing Chia at half-time, with
Hwang Teck Fu switching with
Gandhik Chitre to take charge of the centre. Red Yk were actually defending very well for a time, largely forcing Grilled out of their own half. Egelseder's departure for Milad Rashedi in the 56th minute threw them off their rhythm some, though, but Thach wasn't able to convert the best chance Grilled got in the aftermath, a perfect cross coming in from the left thanks to
Mohd Marzuki Khairul.
The Reds' time would come at last, as 20 year-old Jasem Haj Jafari - who had never stopped running in hope - won a corner off
Atang Mangoye about the 67th minute. There had to always be a chance of scoring from that, and with the visitors not shy about piling bodies into the box, they would get Jahanbakhsh Souzani onto the initial header. This fell short, but newbie Maziar Taban was first to it, and blasted it past
Manuel Vadalà.
They would celebrate that reducer quite heartily indeed, and it was difficult for the home supporters to begrudge them that, given how they had worked for it. In any case, it was more Grilled's own shooting issues than the Reds' defending that kept them from answering, with
Radovan Jaška and
Gandhik Chitre coming close before the 80th minute. That also saw Taban and Souzani booked one after another for the Reds, as they cranked up the aggression on offence.
The final big chance of the match arrived in the 81st minute, right after Mangoye had gone off for
Chirag Thevar. There was a free-kick some twenty-odd yards out on the right, but rather than shoot, Jaška would float it across for
Mohd Marzuki Khairul - whose ambitious flying take would however miss the ball entirely. Khairul might have afforded to laugh at it then, but it would have been very different had it actually mattered.
