Steinbach All Together
Tamton Wrests Win
Grilled Birds' abysmal streak continued with a 3-5 friendly loss to Bangladeshi III.1 frontrunners FC Internationale Steinbach, who are themselves on a seven-game competitive winning run. Belgian head coach Guido Manera didn't even field his S$10.8 million star wing signing Benedetto Bartoletti, a 23 year-old former San Marino youth international, with Spanish Number Eight Ernesto Ramírez all but carrying the team at Saarfield Road, on his 25th birthday.
Austrian playmaker Eduard Wirth and Belgian right winger Cecil Vandenbulcke made up much of the rest of Steinbach's speedy midfield, as Manera apparently ordered his team to attack as defensive policy, from how he left their central defence empty. This risky arrangement ran into some teething troubles, as
Mohd Marzuki Khairul shrugged off some rust with a tricky sixth-minute dribble of rightback Zahid Faiz. Several Grilled teammates were available rushing into the box, and Marzuki found
Damian Hutter cutting across towards the near post, for the lead goal.
This gave
Mohd Marzuki Khairul a much-needed confidence boost after he had been frozen out of the Birds' starting lineup for some weeks, and he would send over a swirling cross seven minutes later, that
Chia Kwang Tse met solidly in mid-air to thump downwards past Dutch custodian Giorgio de Kijsser. Grilled then arguably got an attacking boost as the hardworking
Toma Tamiya twisted his right ankle after a running battle with Eduard Wirth in the 18th minute, which necessitated
Chad Thach to enter as an unplanned replacement.
The stoppage marked the end of the Birds' initial dominance, as it turned out, with the hosts finding Grilled a lot more vulnerable without the ball. Ramírez led by example with some good spells holding on to possession and stringing together long series of short passes, before surging into the penalty area for an emphatic finish past
Dahan Bok in the 25th minute. Five minutes on, Hutter tried an inadvisable ball across to
Mohsen El Khateeb under some pressure, and 19 year-old forward trainee Nusrat Arslan intercepted it to equalize.
Lim An Keng, who had been assigned the captain's armband for the day, took care to remind his players to keep their focus up, but this was for naught as nobody picked Rezaul Tamton's run up in the 26th minute. Ironically, the youngster split both Lim and
Hwang Teck Fu with his spirited dash, before cutting inside
Mohsen El Khateeb to give Steinbach the lead. Granted,
Chia Kwang Tse responded with another strong header as the Birds sent a high one over from kick-off, which made it 3-3 at the break.
Grilled were unable to replicate their early productivity in the second half, and it would be the hosts to control the flow, helped by some five thousand diehards screaming their lungs out at opportune moments. The smooth-moving Rezaul Tamton caused the Birds no end of headaches when he had the ball, and he turned out to be pretty good at placing his shots too, from how his 54th minute twelve-yarder burrowed itself into the top right corner, despite
Dahan Bok covering his angles competently.
The Birds tried to recover, but Steinbach weren't about to let this one slip in front of the home fans, and snappy tackling combined with safety-first passing had them keep Grilled from testing De Kijsser any further. 17 year-old striker Navroz Islam extended the scoreline to 5-3 with a rough-and-ready blast from the middle in the 72nd minute, which
Kendell El Khateeb tried to replicate from a sweet Marzuki inside pass a couple of minutes later - only to clip it inches wide.
