Sektion Five-Three
Hojac Hijack
Lebanese II.1 frontrunners FK ZZU Sektion Libanon arrived at The Cooking Pot for today's exhibition, and while the 4-5-1 they lined up in did not promise entertainment, they would display an eye-opening facility at utilizing the full width of the pitch, which would them level it at three-all as late as the 55th minute. Grilled's initiative had them prevail in the longer game, if at the cost of one of their most-beloved veterans.
ZZU cut a fine figure in their red-and-white with their traveling team clearly centered around Portuguese captain Josué Afonso Fernandes, who would seemingly be everywhere at once playing out of central midfield. His hustle was such that his eleventh-minute opener was grudgingly appreciated even by the home fans, who could recognize the artistry in his making room for himself in taking Roy Arendal's cross.
Paulino Trindade actually had a similar opening from a free-kick in the third minute, but Georges Jalloul did just enough to throw his shot off.
Trindade would get it right the second time on the restart after Fernandes' goal, as Grilled's massed rush would catch ZZU unprepared. Encouraged, the Birds would keep their swarming high-pressure style up for the next ten minutes or thereabouts, resulting in two more goals - from
Chan Ze Han in the 18th, and then a tap-in by the well-placed
Radovan Jaška in the 22nd. English custodian Danny Hughes got his fingertips to Chan's excellent curler afterwards, though, and Grilled could not maintain the pace.
The action would thus peter out to a welcome half-time break, and this time it was the visitors who pulled the frenzy off to great effect. It was the Birds' turn to be thrown off by their opponents' getting up close and personal, which forced them inside - and left acres of space for ZZU's wingers to consider their deliveries. 20 year-old Zahi Al Khalil would get several free crosses with Trindade drawn away by Arendal, and one of them went to Stanislaw Hojac just inside the penalty area, and was finished off via a looping volley into the ground, and then over
Cameron Law.
The Austrian striker did it again in the 55th minute to equalize, as ZZU continued pressurizing the Birds, and Hojac would be there when the debuting Khaled Alawieh knocked a decent effort onto the bar. They might well have built on that too, had their groove not been spoilt by a serious thigh muscle tear sustained by Willfried Sprickelortsschneise after 63 minutes. English player-coach Leon Gourdin would put himself on for his stricken man, but only in time to watch as
Aw Keng Chuan flicked
Egemen Dinçer Ferzan's cross home off his forehead for 4-3.
It turned out that Gourdin's strengths did not lie in defending, as he was left on the wrong side of
Gandhik Chitre two minutes later, as another Ferzan cross came in. The other ZZU players would rally about their coach after that, and after some delaying tactics that had Akbar Homsi booked for time-wasting, they would settle into an acceptable - if not very promising - equilibrium. Chan would leave for
Kalki Parvathaneni with ten minutes remaining, also handing over the armband, in what would turn out to probably be Kalki's final on-pitch appearance.
The farewell would happen two minutes into the four minutes of time added on, and soon after
Hwang Teck Fu had tested Hughes with a stinger from outside the box. Grilled had kept the ball in then, and Kalki would try to take it back into the box from the left, only to be barged out of play by Roy Arendal. The challenge itself did not seem too out of hand, but Kalki lying immobile was, and the friendly would end on a slightly sour note with the Grilled Number Twenty having to be administered oxygen on the sidelines.
