Forever So Deadly
Chan's Indian Summer
Having won four Indian Cups and seven national ones in total, visitors ForeverIndia might have been considered to have a similar reputation to the Grilled Birds of the past, in the sense of the league title having eluded them. They might yet dispel this criticism, sitting as they are in second place in the I-League now, but they were not going to get much of a boost at The Cooking Pot today.
A relatively modest crowd of 6400 had bought tickets to watch ForeverIndia, who had brought some of their bigger names such as Bangladeshi striker Golam Bhuyan, Polish midfielder Tim Höcketstaller and Finnish national squad hopeful Erkka Kosunen.
Aw Keng Chuan would have the main task of stopping them in his favoured defensive midfield role shielding the defence, which placed a lot of responsibility on the closely-watched
Damian Hutter.
Mohsen El Khateeb would be called upon to lead Grilled's line, as
Tian Yonghang gave
Phua Ming Xin the day off.
ForeverIndia's 3-4-3 with a focus on width would not match up well against Grilled's concentration of force, as the latter succeeded in dragging the play towards the direction of their strengths. This involved a lot of close-ranged passing and advancing in smaller groups, which had a penalty given when
Gandhik Chitre got tangled up with Sabal Panigrahi just inside the box, with 17 minutes gone.
Atang Mangoye conferred with Aw over who would take it, before stepping up to stab it past Belarussian goaltender Yarin Kupferman.
There would be more gamesmanship than might have been expected in an informal friendly after this event, and after some questionable manhandling on
Mohsen El Khateeb's cross from the left wing, Kosunen would soon after be booked for a blatant shirt-tug on
Hwang Teck Fu. Grilled were hardly angels either with Mangoye carded for a cynical takedown of Bhuyan in the 25th minute, after Baena had scored a second, although the Botswanan didn't let that get him down, and whipped a great free-kick off the crossbar on his next touch.
Grilled would have another important player follow
Federico Parada onto the treatment table, unfortunately, as
Lim An Keng went to ground after making a sharp turn on his left ankle, aggravating a leftover sprain from against Galactic Eagles CF. This was one of Tian's big nightmares, and Lim was swiftly replaced by
Mohd Marzuki Khairul, after a cursory inspection.
The fans would let out a huge cheer as
Chan Ze Han made his appearance for the start of the second half in place of Mohsen, after his six-minute stint on Sunday. The Number Eleven took pains to pace himself, from how economical his movements were once getting a feel of the place, but it was not as if this adversely affected his offensive contributions by much. By the 58th minute, he had gotten a hand in two more goals for Grilled, first dummying for
Paulino Trindade to run onto the ball and bang it home in the 54th minute, and then knocking it in from fifteen yards following a long dispute on Ujendra Karnik's yellow card.
Karnik evidently felt strongly that Baena had sold that one to the referee, and while the left winger lost that argument, he would get his own back in his own way. ForeverIndia had not been attacking much, but Karnik's determined dribble almost down to the corner flag would open new vistas for them for once. Still, there didn't seem much of an obvious passing route there, but he somehow whipped it low across to Sukhdev Biswal with barely inches to spare, for a straightforward tap-in.
That was 4-1 Grilled, and the match would become more competitive as the visitors started to assert themselves more. Bhuyan was causing quite a lot of problems on his own, which was only exacerbated when
Damian Hutter - who had been having quite a fine day - made way to let
Bhavya Panigrahi have his twenty minutes. However, it was not Bhuyan's day really, as
Chan Ze Han demonstrated with some impeccable ball control to sashay past two defenders in the 76th minute, and pop his second goal to the far corner.
Aw Keng Chuan was one of the first to congratulate Chan for that, and he nearly reprised his newfound taste for scoring too in smashing a long shot against the upright, three minutes on. Erkka Kosunen had his moment as he lobbed
Manuel Vadalà in an audacious effort while being backed away from goal, but there was no taking the attention from Chan, who replied with another glorious run... and his hat-trick.