Barserena Bested
Chia Loses It
Grilled Birds might have smashed Chilean VI.701 visitors Barserena for eight goals at The Cooking Pot, but Barserena might yet have walked away with the moral victory, after some unseemly scenes towards the end of the friendly. Footballing wise, it was not much of a contest, with there being no sight of S$15 million-rated Sri Lankan wing prodigy Imran Abeynaike in the Barserena squad, which was a great disappointment to the few thousand diehard supporters who had gathered.
They would have to make do with Chinese dazzler Zhao Dunwen on the left, and the promise of Luis Fuenzalida - starting only his fourth senior match - on the right. Neither quite approaches Abeynaike's on-pitch charisma, though, and both would be well corralled by their Grilled counterparts. Polish captain Paweł Mataczyński tried to muster the resistance, by the Birds would be three up by the fifteenth minute, with
Orest Tokarz bustling to a brace scoring either side of
Gandhik Chitre's deflected header.
It was not all smooth sailing for the Birds, who went on to lose reserve goalkeeper
Cameron Law to a marginally late charge from aggressive Argentine fullback Julio Jorge Tilger in the 23rd minute. This had Tilger booked by the stern Mongolian referee Yeke Noyon, even as Law signalled to continue, only to have his request overridden by head coach
Tian Yonghang.
Manuel Vadalà entered in his stead, and would be equally uninvolved in general.
The rest of the half would see
Federico Parada continue to strut his stuff against the inexperienced Fuenzalida, which brought him a solid goal in the 34th minute, having already racked up a couple of fine assists from his work down the left flank. This included
Gandhik Chitre's goal six minutes earlier, in which the wide forward mirrored Parada's slaloming dribble nicely.
A slow start to the second half had Grilled restrain themselves some, and the pace would only gradually build back up thanks to excellent shielding from Argentine veteran stopper Mauro Gabriel Totti, who exploited his vast experience to the fullest. He could not help but give up a free-kick in the 69th minute, though, and after some involved preparation, the Birds worked it around the box to
Joe Reece, who slotted the sixth in from a tight angle.
Joe Reece would then add another with ten minutes to go, swiftly followed by
Gandhik Chitre completing his own hat-trick, but little did the audience know that the main drama was only just beginning.
Chia Kwang Tse had not lost his taste for accomplishment after largely marking Mataczyński out of the game, but his roaring run and strike in the 86th minute only brought the best out of Barserena's custodian Orlando Vaz, who knocked it aside with his quick hands.
That didn't sit well with Chia, who thought that he should have been awarded a penalty for handball after his shot marginally brushed a defender's arm in his own reckoning, and he would grab the rebound to protest - which was immediately punished by a yellow card. Chia would still be fuming when
Joe Reece put one just over and
José Luiz Velho replaced
Gandhik Chitre, and he wound up haranguing Noyon in injury time, which resulted in the obvious red.
