Wierum Worn Down
Double-Double Face
Guyana fourth division visitors Wierum UTD conceded ten goals as Grilled Birds entered their new season on a high, which did not take away from the courageous resistance that some of their players put up. The affiliate of Netherlands club Splinterts put up a largely reserve side, if with some unpolished gems such as Italian Number Ten Arnaldo Morettini, and Spanish fullback Alberto Ibarluce. On the other end, the appearance of
Lim An Keng and
Chia Kwang Tse for Grilled suggested that they would be dropped from the upcoming cup contest, but they being at less than their best was no impediment to utterly dominating midfield.
Still, Wierum would hold out for over twenty minutes before
Evandro La Face finally outwitted countryman Ibarluce on the left, with some help from
Egemen Dinçer Ferzan who went inside first. This would be followed by a
Joe Reece brace scored in the 23rd and 29th minutes, as the Birds worked the entire breadth of the field with tenacity. 17 year-old goalkeeper Atxiti Lerrutz was mature beyond his years as he tried to command his box against the incursions, but there was a limit as to what even a five-man backline could do here.
The Birds would then switch to shooting from further out, leading to
Aw Keng Chuan and then
Chia Kwang Tse putting it in from the edge of the penalty area or beyond a minute apart, starting from Aw's free-spirited strike in the 32nd. Chia in contrast chose to take a few more steps after receiving the ball, which was likely the correct choice with Swiss defender Grégoire Heintz sliding into the path of his shot right as he turned aside.
It was a slow start to the second half too as the Birds willingly recycled the ball between themselves as the visitors chased, and the tenor of the game would only pick up when
Gandhik Chitre's extended run was halted by an illegal block in the 62nd minute, and
Radovan Jaška curled the free-kick into the net. La Face then lost the left defence again for seven-nil in the 66th minute, before
Joe Reece got his hat-trick thanks to Chia's redirection from a corner, duly acknowledged.
Teo Chuan Yong had already been waiting for
Mohsen El Khateeb to come off as that corner was taken, but he would not have too much of a part to play in the closing twenty minutes, which belonged to
Evandro La Face.
Gústav Thoroddsen might have attracted most of the headlines in the past year, but La Face was well lethal in his own right, as evidenced by his stooping header that got the arc of the ball just right, in the 81st. Hat-trick done, he then went one better than Reece with a competent finish swinging in from the left once more.
The story was not quite over yet, and after the inclusion of
Bilal Mohammad Harun and
Toma Tamiya just before stoppage time, the former would nearly bag one for himself as he stormed in for his trademark thunderbolt to the delight of the crowd, only to send it whistling inches over the crossbar. There would then be a downer ending for
Paulino Trindade, who was caught in mid-jump by Maciej Hermanowski's intentional barge, and landed heavily on his side.
