Marause Mobbed
Thach Up
Guinea Marause had opted to rise to III.1 after winning their Division Four league last term, and entered this friendly on a streak of ten competitive wins. New French playmaker Stéphane Drappier led his team out in a 5-2-3 formation at The Cooking Pot, and although they did put up a good show in flashes, it was the Birds to plow through for a cricket score.
There were few indications that Marause would take the game to Grilled on their own initiative, but they were truthfully handling themselves well for the first half-hour and a bit, with the Birds barely leading thanks to
Chad Thach's quick thinking on
Paulino Trindade's sixth minute rush. Thach would be the Birds' most-involved player, what with the ball being continually recycled through the middle, and he rightly bagged a second in the 36th when all but forced to bring it up by himself.
As it turned out, the visitors were pretty good at shutting down Grilled's strikers, but not so much at tracking attacks originating from deeper. Perhaps noticing that,
Lim An Keng emulated Thach by picking Facinet Diara's pocket from behind when the defender was otherwise occupied. That was 3-0, and a few minutes later, Alhassane Dixinn would pounce on Thach's bullet of a strike from the left... but he was unable to hold on to it, and Thach would score anyway after
Toma Tamiya knocked it back to him.
That Thach hat-trick had Grilled take the tempo a couple of notches down for the second half, which again saw a collected defensive press by the Guinea team. One could hardly fault them from conceding to
Mohd Marzuki Khairul's clever finish in the 70th, but that would cost Grilled dearly, with
Hwang Teck Fu having overextended his ankle to execute the assist then. He would be surrounded by concerned teammates after they realised that he was for real, and a quick check by the medic had the orderlies hurry over to bear him off.
Chan Ze Han's entrance would see
Lim An Keng head
Toma Tamiya's searching corner home, which also saw Marause come of out their shell. The spectators would be left wondering what took them so long, as Uruguayan forward Nahuel Pedroza forced a consolation past
Dahan Bok on their first serious attempt. There would be another on the counter from Pedroza in the 84th minute, after an almost-comical series of misses by the Grilled players.
