Chitre Out A Pair
Tejas Draws Wrong Card
The Birds continued on their path to the league title with a 4-2 home win over Joker 9, aided by having a numerical advantage for most of the contest. The much-anticipated brawl saw close to 86000 tickets being sold, and the excellent weather promised good passing football - which was indeed in abundance. Dane Kim was on a revenge mission after getting narrowly edged out 4-5 at Aljunied Bridge three weeks ago, but his change-up to a matching 2-5-3 was not enough either.
After not managing to put the lid on Grilled at home, Kim would take Portuguese sweeper Avelino Franco out from today's lineup, and insert 23 year-old former FC Marttaliitto striker Tejas Gopalakrishnan between Chan and Tay in a provocative gesture. The Jokers' head coach would arguably have his faith misplaced, though it was hard to recognize that from how Gopalakrishnan disrupted Grilled's backline early on. His movements were hard to track, and had a large role in winning his side's first corner after seven minutes - one that Hans-Ulrich Rehn won out against
Hwang Teck Fu in the air for, but could not keep on target.
That near-miss had the home fans raising their volume a notch, and it didn't take long for their wishes to be granted. Joker 9's abandonment of a third defender had its consequences, one of which was
Gandhik Chitre having much more room in which to maneuver. Taking a leaf out of Gopalakrishnan's book, Chitre would remove himself from the centrebacks' consciousness for long enough to set himself up for a clear run on goal in the 16th minute, and he would keep his nerve against Jens-Harald Schimmelpfennig's fevered rush to open the scoring.
The Jokers were of course well capable of replying, but they would have their odds badly damaged by Tejas Gopalakrishnan's dismissal soon afterwards. A more experienced striker would probably have ignored
Raúl Himadas' little shirt-tugs up close, but it apparently went too far for Gopalakrishnan after a short verbal exchange. He would butt heads with the unsuspecting Birds defender, who dropped to the ground in surprise as much as anything. Argentine referee Bob Claydon was not able to exercise any discretion after witnessing that, and out came the red card.
With Joker 9 reduced to ten men, Grilled would gain quite a bit more breathing space, although that was not immediately obvious with how the rest of the Joker team compensated. True, the Birds would go ahead in the 30th minute from a top-drawer
Raúl Himadas free-kick curler - if to loud whistling from the visiting fans - but they would not hold that lead into the break; Tay Fu Yew took
Aw Keng Chuan and
Ha Qicai on with supreme confidence eight minutes later, and outdribbled both before sliding a memorable finish across
Dimitris Germanakos.
Grilled Birds retained the better reasons to look forward to the second half, of course, and the Jokers' man disadvantage would soon tell, as they tried to stay with their original attacking gameplan regardless.
Gandhik Chitre remained the Birds' biggest threat with his intelligent positioning hanging off the last defender, which got him another open shot in the 50th minute as
Paulino Trindade carried it up the left.
Mohd Marzuki Khairul took Aldis Cildermanis with him on his attempted breaking run, which left Chitre alone and with a decent angle to work with.
It would then be 4-1 three more minutes on, as the Birds were presented with an indirect free-kick after Schimmelpfennig had to recover his own throw-out, not having noticed Chitre hovering. Himadas took his time as the Jokers put six men between him and goal as both
Chad Thach and
Mohd Marzuki Khairul stood beside him to apply the actual shot, but the Spanish specialist would spread it further wide to
Brian Reddy in the end - to great effect.
Still, Joker 9 were not dead and buried yet, not with forwards of the level of Chan and Tay on board. The former would have his say next as Vikas Satishchandra advanced bravely under fire in the 58th minute, and a premature challenge from Aw would leave Chan in a one-on-one against
Ha Qicai. The Grilled captain tried to stick close to the former Singapore U-20 star, but was left helpless by Chan's arsenal of close-up tricks.
Dimitris Germanakos tried to crowd him too, but not nearly quickly enough.
The game would have become much more interesting had Hans-Ulrich Rehn put it past Germanakos nine minutes later, after Vibhav Singh had sighted the Birds goalie wandering too far from his lines, but Germanakos would hotfoot it backwards before managing clawing the lob away from the encroaching German winger. Grilled had one more big chance after
Lim An Keng replaced Hwang for the last ten minutes, but
Mohd Marzuki Khairul's rising volley scraped the crossbar harmlessly.
