Polonez Wipe
Chia Makes Statement
Grilled Birds' final friendly of this year would be against Polish V.220 visitors KS Polonez Warszawa, who have just promoted from Division Six on the back of ten consecutive victories. They would be without some of their top men such as Finnish maestro John Kavander and first-choice German keeper Ahmet Ekrem, though Lauri Kokko would start at forward in Ariel Mosakowski's experimental 2-5-3. The battle of converted midfielders would be convincingly won by
Chia Kwang Tse, though, as the Number Six bagged three - which included the vanishingly-rare feat of scoring two goals in the same minute.
There wasn't much indication that it was going to be this unbalanced after the first exchanges, with the very active Polonez frontline throwing up no end of trouble for
Markus Pallas.
Genki Nagano's mopping up would prevent any real shots from getting through, at least up until the 12th minute, when Kokko's header on the stretch would require
Khairil Anwar Hashim Mohd Ismail to tap it over for a corner. That would be cleared long, sadly for the visitors, and a trip on
Aw Keng Chuan brought a free-kick that
Raúl Himadas blasted through the wall for 1-0.
Chia would then join in proper as he ran onto a loose pass that 19 year-old Józef Andrzejczuk couldn't quite get away, but opposing goalie Kazimierz Chałupka would bat it around the post, having managed his angles well. It was then Polonez's turn to defend the corner and work their way through the retreating Birds to win their own free-kick at the right edge of the penalty area. Polonez had evidently drilled for this by how they had Axel Malmö charge in after holding up play, but
Khairil Anwar Hashim Mohd Ismail had read the situation in full.
There would then be a bit of a truce with the teams messing up a little, and it would be Grilled to recover first as
Toma Tamiya caught Chałupka getting a tad too greedy with his advance. Toma's early cross sailed inches over the goalkeeper's desperate reach, and
Chia Kwang Tse was right behind him to power a header home against Valentin Tătar's attentions. The kick-off would then be lost immediately to
Kendell El Khateeb on a bad touch, and seconds later, Chia would have it in the net again following some crisp interplay.
Astoundingly, Chałupka had to be on alert to stop
Aw Keng Chuan from repeating that all over again, and Polonez survived to the end of the half without conceding further.
Dahan Bok entered for the next forty-five minutes as per
Tian Yonghang's time-sharing arranagement, but all eyes would be on
Chia Kwang Tse as he broke Polonez's lines on his first dribble this half, for four-nil.
The rest of the match was pretty quiet in contrast, with
Paulino Trindade's 53rd minute flat cross from the left probably the best of the remaining chances; sadly for El Khateeb, Hacène Duc got in front of him to defend it. The Swiss fullback would be replaced seven minutes later by Krzysztof Napierała, and it was mostly uneventful till injury time, when Chia crashed a strong drive off the near post from
Ha Qicai's tricky setup work.
