The Light Reignited
Forwards March
Grilled Birds finally returned to winning ways at The Cooking Pot against Gibraltar IV.2 leaders LusoLux United, as their first-team strikers collected five goals if from midfield.
Dan Alstani had proclaimed the result unimportant ahead of kick-off, with his 3-5-2 supporting the declaration. LusoLux one-upped that by starting with just nine men, however, which made the result fairly remarkable in retrospect.
Mason Glendinning and
Kendell El Khateeb would head up Grilled's attack, facing the visiting duo of Andrea Giglitto and Thomas Deolmedo. Andrew Perez anchored a three-man midfield tilted heavily to the right, with 19 year-old goalie Amleto Linzalone having the unenviable task of protecting their goal despite their considerable manpower shortage.
Hwang Teck Fu wasn't about to be charitable, and he would force his way past Diego Sotés from the right hand side, to notch the opener in the eighth minute.
LusoLux were justifiably unable to cope with the Birds' numerical advantage, as
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko thrived in his preferred central midfield role. There would be three goals in five minutes beginning from the 17th, as the Birds turned the screws with practised short passing.
Chia Kwang Tse bagged the second goal upon Glendinning's giving it back, after a swift turn of pace to slice between two defenders.
Lim An Keng was next up two minutes later, and for that most of the work had been done by Hein and Chia, who had the visiting midfielders running at shadows with their incisive interplay. Hwang would be unsympathetic as usual as he added the fourth goal in the 21st minute, after Andrew Robba had followed
Kendell El Khateeb on his diversion run. Linzalone came close to stopping Hwang's shot towards the far corner, but not quite.
There would be a fifth from
Lim An Keng on the half-hour mark against a disspirited LusoLux United, which brought whispers from the stands against their head coach Alessandro Guernelli for fielding an incomplete side. Italian skipper Andrea Giglitto kept it from devolving into a complete farce, fortunately, as he chipped in on the defence only too often.
The second half started with a double substitution by Grilled, bringing
Mohd Marzuki Khairul and
Damian Hutter on for Chia and
Mohsen El Khateeb respectively. The Birds were seemingly under instructions not to be too inhospitable, as they adopted a rather more casual approach to the game. This did not keep
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko from unleashing a rocket from the edge of the box in the 55th minute, but Linzalone raised his stock with a superb flying save.
Grilled would look lost at times themselves with their young forwards not always maintaining positional discipline, though it was not like their opponents were equipped to benefit. The Birds would not widen their lead either, as
Lim An Keng and
Mason Glendinning shaved the woodwork on their following chances, before
Toma Tamiya came on for an out-of-sorts
Chad Thach towards the end.
