The Same Sea
Penalty Uproar
Raúl Himadas might have scored a brace,
Gandhik Chitre gotten one before being sent off, but the talk of the day at MarinArena was indisputably German referee Christoph Eminger, who had awarded Grilled Birds two penalties within a minute of each other. This had the Birds reprise their 4-1 victory at The Cooking Pot about a month back, and had the Sailors' head coach Reimar Ahrenberg raging at his countryman in black.
Ahrenberg had evidently put some thought into how he might stymie the Birds, beginning with a transition to a two-man midfield with the express intention of getting the ball to his forwards as directly as possible. Italian powerhouse Danilo Cipressa was out, then, with Ahrenberg favouring the young José Manuel Rubia and Ralf Weisner, to liaise with Finnish main man Ville Vähäsantanen. Matías Martínez would be the midfielder sacrificed, with Phua Yau Jia selected over Porter Wu in defence.
The suspension of
Chad Thach had
Hwang Teck Fu promoted to the Grilled forward line, with
Ha Qicai recovering the captaincy from
Darko Andrović in what was an otherwise unremarkable Birds XI. The first half an hour was pretty dire, to say the least, as Grilled refused to bite on the obvious Sailors bait to overcommit.
Brian Reddy recorded the first attempt of note in the 35th minute as he cut strongly to the outside of Li An Chuan before trying to lob Antonio Caro in mid-run, and actually came tantalizingly close.
This perhaps awakened the hosts to how continued passivity could eventually cost them, and there would finally be some proper football going on.
Gandhik Chitre, who had frequently been double-teamed, lost his cool and brought Tatos Karapetyan down for a clear yellow card, but this ironically led to his breakthrough; Caro tried to speed things up by launching the free-kick towards Gustavsson, but Phua unwittingly strode in the way of the pass, and Chitre happily latched onto the rebound and sent it past the scrambling goalkeeper.
The home fans weren't amused at that, but their attention would soon be redirected away from their own players. With just five minutes left in the half, Marina Sailors would up the pace in an effort to secure an equaliser, but they turned out to not quite have the organisation for it. Still, there didn't appear much in Karapetyan's nudge on
Lim An Keng on the edge of the box, but the Grilled striker fell nonetheless, and Eminger gave the penalty after reviewing the video replay. It was an extremely unpopular call to say the least, but
Raúl Himadas professionally shut the loud jeering out, to knock it at Caro's right goalpost.
The brouhaha had not started to fade when a
second penalty was given, although Eminger had little say about this one, from how a flustered Mohd Akmal Hizam Khairul Hakim barged blindly into the back of
Hwang Teck Fu as the latter took the ball into the penalty area. Sparing Mohd Akmal a card did nothing to soften the crowd reaction, and Himadas did well to weather the absolute barrage of noise, as he sized up the goalmouth once more. It was an even better take, lifted high into the top left, which however found few admirers in the stands.
The first half ended soon after that with Grilled 3-0 up, and Ahrenberg heckling Eminger in their native German, all the way into the tunnel. While what was said was not understood by almost all others, it was definitely not very nice, and had the referee been of a mind to, he was well within his rights to book the Sailors boss too. Given the special circumstances, however, he chose to let it slide.
MarinArena witnessed the rare sight of the match officials getting booed as the teams assembled for the second half, which started off with Sailors pumping the ball downfield whenever they could, but to little avail. It would take a goal kick off
Hwang Teck Fu's fierce strike in the 66th to launch a successful counter, which had Ralf Weisner hold
Ha Qicai off as he awaited backup. In the end, Bulgarian sweeper Tatos Karapetya swept in as part of a second wave, to put it in
Radomil Marcol's net.
Hwang, like Chitre, would have his own word soon after, with
Chia Kwang Tse sending the ball over the flat backline on the very next attack, for him to make it 4-1.
Gandhik Chitre was not long for the game, as it happened, as he engaged in an all-too-violent tussle against Mario Gustavsson as they fought for possession in midfield. A final shove from Chitre was too much for Eminger to accept, which meant a second yellow card for the Grilled forward.
Sailors responded as quickly as they could with another sharp rally down the middle, but Phua Yau Jia couldn't quite get it under control, and wound up spraying it well over the crossbar.
Tian Yonghang made a tactical substitution of
Paulino Trindade on for
Darko Andrović at the first opportunity, which was sufficient to hold the fort until the last minute, which saw
Kendell El Khateeb and
Markus Pallas making a brief debut. Mohd Akmal Hizam Khairul Hakim then got booked in added time for heckling the linesman, for which he had the full support of the aggrieved home fans.
