Macacos Play Ball
Fu Prospers
The Birds headed to Gibraltar for the first time in their history to meet IV.16 club Macacos de Gibraltar F.C in an exhibition game, with Macacos being a project of established Venezuelan outfit Guatire A.S.C, who have also expanded to Puerto Rico through Guaynabo Conquerers F.C. The freshly-founded side are being coached by Englishman Rudolph Gemill, whose big signing for the season had been the very promising 18 year-old winger James Scott, son of well-known local forward David Scott.
Scott would not be in the matchday squad today as Gemill went for a creative 5-2-3 that basically yielded the entire centre of the field to the Birds, and if there was some grand strategy behind this - it wasn't quite working. Teenaged French right winger Brieuc Tabary would feature after being sent off on Sunday against Birseck Gibraltar, with 19 year-old striker James Torres probably the pick of this lot.
This would be far from enough against an odd-looking yet still formidable Birds midfield that contained
Aw Keng Chuan,
Lim An Keng and
Genki Nagano, without mentioning the class that
Hisham Zubari brought out wide. While Zubari is clearly being eased into a defensive role at Grilled, he remained more than capable of beating a man or two through sheer skill, which was what he did to set
Paulino Trindade up for a good finish in the fourteenth minute.
Tabary would be back to his bad habits as he took
Lim An Keng down with a sloppy trip three minutes on, which had the midfielder move about gingerly on his left ankle for a bit; the lad was relieved to escape with a yellow, as was Torres after crunching into Nagano from behind in the 36th minute, with
Fu Wenlong having also been assisted by Zubari before that.
Mason Glendinning evened it up a little on the indisciplined impetuous youngster end with his own late push on Oliver Parody in an effort to get to
Fu Wenlong's miscued lob, but in the end it would be Fu and Trindade to make it four goals by half-time. Fu first dipped in a beaut of a free-kick in the 41st minute, before Trindade anticipated
Mohsen El Khateeb's cross perfectly, and flung himself into a scissors kick.
Mohsen would not march out for the second half with
Toma Tamiya replacing him in defence, which had no bearing on
Fu Wenlong completing a deserved hat-trick. Carlos Gallego had reason to be wary given that he had already conceded from one of Fu's specials, but there was just no accounting for him crashing it low under the defensive wall this time. Gallego was halfway across to the other post by then, and could only stick his trailing leg out fruitlessly as the grounder sliced past in his wake.
Paulino Trindade went for his own treble immediately after, but young centreback John Rodriguez would head the attempt off the line, after Trindade had successfully bent it around Gallego towards his left post. That did not prevent Grilled regulars
Lim An Keng and
Aw Keng Chuan from having their say in the 59th and 63rd minutes respectively, with Marzuki and
Markus Pallas getting a short look-in.
