March On Verdi
Kee Chia
Burkina Faso II.3 frontrunners Real Verdimar Banfora hosted the Birds in their crisp navy and green, with their near sixty-thousand seater La Luna Banfora in the midst of expansion. Young Faroese head coach Finn Vágstún laid out a 3-4-3 with Arsène Bandaogo overloading the right flank and Lithuanian Dautaras Peredijonovas captaining the side, but with none of their top stars such as American playmaker Liam Hadfield participating, this got ugly really fast.
Six minutes fast, to be precise, as that was how long it took
Paulino Trindade to place it past 20 year-old Greek backup goalie Panagos Zimnis, running in from the left after a serendipitous swop with
Toma Tamiya. The São Tomé winger has been thriving after Ferzan's departure increased his playing time, as Jean-Paul Galman soon discovered upon unsuccessfully snapping at Trindade's heels on his next dribble. Portuguese referee Olimpio Ganz was eager to stamp his authority, and did not give Galman a free pass, with the yellow card being flashed immediately.
Grilled were moving it freely between their flanks with accurate crossfield passes as Verdimar stayed narrow, and
Lim An Keng would have a field day going for goal from late runs, and scored from two similar strikes skipping home from the right - in the 15th and 36th minutes.
Hwang Teck Fu had a hasty knee-poke swiped around the post by Zimnis in the 29th, but the Birds got a free-kick as
Damian Hutter was held back outside the box on the corner, and
Toma Tamiya proved spot-on with his effort aimed at the top left.
That had the Birds 4-0 up at half-time, but the climax of this match had yet to arrive; they were understandably eager to erase the stain of Adem Boğ putting four past them on Sunday, and what better way to do that, than to achieve the feat themselves? It would be
Chia Kwang Tse to step up, and he began his quest with a graceful chip over Zimnis in the 65th, when most would have expected him to put his laces through the ball.
Granted, that might have worked anyway, but Chia would be beyond criticism for his choices in the attacking third for this half, in perhaps the most impressive half-hour of his entire professional career to date. After feeding
Hwang Teck Fu to no result 73 minutes in, Chia would take Gwénole Falque on by himself five minutes later, and slipped it past Zimnis after taking it to the inside with a smooth scissors move.
The spectators became aware that they were watching a very special individual performance the very next minute, as
Paulino Trindade edged ahead of Charles Djiga for a hanging cross from the right, only for Chia to soar over both defenders contesting it, to crash the seventh goal in.
Tian Yonghang would allow his team ample time to congratulate Chia on his hat-trick, before proceeding with his planned substitutions of
Chan Ze Han and
Radovan Jaška on, for Aw and Hutter.
Verdimar then recorded their only shot on target for the day, as Grilled took their own sweet time reconfiguring themselves on the restart. Rachid Yaméogo would finally have the bounce go his way, but
Ha Qicai was not in a mood to be too generous, and chased him down for the tackle after Yaméogo took too long to line his shot up. Not only that, Ha would play it straight down the middle to split the hosts' defence, and who else would it be but Chia to finish it off?