RWSST 2 - 5 Grilled Birds
Shaking Off RWSST
Chia Revival
The Birds would land in Moscow for this midweek friendly against fellow II.2 club RWSST, whose top achievement thus far has been lifting the Russian Emerald Challenger Cup equivalent, four seasons back. Israeli Idan Kirkilan has taken over the reins since then with a brief to lift the team into the Premier Liga, but they have found the going not as easy as they might have liked. The S$8.25 million acquisition of Lithuanian striker Balionis Kaubris couldn't get them past SOTA in the quarterfinals of this season's Challenger Cup, and indifferent results in the league have seen them rest 16 points behind runaway leader RFC_Flagman in the table.
This did not dampen their grassroots support much, with nearly five thousand turning up to watch their second team take the Birds on. 32 year-old Azerbaijani midfielder Sahib Hüseynli would be their main man today, with Dutch star winger Orlando Rose to his right. As for Grilled,
Kendell El Khateeb would start again with
Lim An Keng and
Gandhik Chitre providing assurance on either side, and
Dahan Bok would be provided another chance to prove himself in goal.
Kick-off had the home team frazzle their visitors with their wholesale movement, with former Mongolian international Vachir Qutugh thriving in his team's open-man passing system. Grilled's less-tested back two of
Markus Pallas and
Radovan Jaška would not be able to cope, and
Dahan Bok had to pick the ball out of his own net in the 14th minute, from Lukas Groiß' sharpshooting coming inside from the left.
This state of affairs would not last too long, and after Grilled got settled in, they would begin to bombard teenaged custodian Petr Dudinskiy with attempts from all angles.
Hwang Teck Fu and
Gandhik Chitre overturned RWSST's lead by the 29th minute, which had the hosts withdraw Qutugh for youngster Pakhom Samoilov. That understandably did little for their midfield coherence, and
Kendell El Khateeb wowed with a messy run that had him somehow chipping Dudinskiy at the end.
Lukas Groiß pulled another back for 2-3 three minutes before the break, as Orlando Rose left Jaška for dead with a beautifully-executed stop-start dribble. This did not last too long as Grilled started the second half with
Genki Nagano in for
Kendell El Khateeb, and the Birds too took just three minutes to return the favour;
Chia Kwang Tse had been latched onto by Yuriy Nikulushkin through the first half, but there was no keeping him from getting onto
Lim An Keng's lob here.
Nikulushkin's fading stamina meant that Chia would be allowed far freer expression, and the Grilled attacker responded with a series of shots, one of which got past Dudinskiy in the 55th minute through sheer power.
Toma Tamiya's 66th minute free-kick was then palmed over for a corner, which brought a chance on the counter for Markus Kelander that was not taken advantage of.
Gandhik Chitre would attempt to add a sixth to Grilled's tally in the 72nd minute with a sudden header, but Petr Dudinskiy was light on his feet, and made the save.
