Six At Rogues
Trindade From Behind
Grilled Birds took home a 6-0 win from Kyiv today, having played Ukrainian III.10 leaders ROGUE 0NE at their The Helm. Their management's operation of three other subsidiary clubs, as well as the Rogue Coven women's team in the newly-started Hattrick Femme International, could be considered a testament to their commercial viability. Moreover, considering that ROGUE's biggest stars such as Marko Sobol and Pavlo Lomasov were not involved, it would be entirely inappropriate to read too much into the result.
It would be a blatantly-counterattacking 5-2-3 from the hosts that denied any pretensions towards contesting possession, with 21 year-old wingers Viktor Khersonskyi and Yustyn Voloshenyuk deployed purely towards wing breakaways. Veteran French skipper Kévin Colin, a former winner of the Norwegian Ponduscupen rubin, had the unenviable job of augmenting his defence when required, despite nearing forty. Much-decorated Japanese sweeper Jun Kimura had his work cut out for him too, though his winning of national titles in Nepal and Uganda in the past few years spoke to the longevity of his relatively-reserved style.
With
Hwang Teck Fu captaining the Birds from right wing, Grilled laid into ROGUE 0NE from the starting whistle, only to find them quite impenetrable when sitting deep - especially with their wingers included. It took
Paulino Trindade adding to the numbers from the back for Grilled to manufacture their first shot on target in the fourteenth minute, which Lithuanian goalkeeper Arnas Goštaltavičius gathered easily enough. His long throw out released Zakhar Anyshchenko, and Venezuelan defender Oscar Plaza gave
Dahan Bok a good scare with a storming strike that left his goalframe vibrating.
The match struggled to get going with Grilled too often bogged down before reaching their final third, with
Fu Wenlong smashing his first free-kick straight into their five-man wall in the 24th minute. There was a bit of a commotion on the half-hour as Viktor Khersonskyi was subbed off for 17 year-old Volodymyr Vlokh to make his debut, which also had Vadym Drozda pushed up. Khersonskyi apparently didn't like the decision, and was given a stern talking-to by his Singaporean head coach, Seah Ting Tze.
The switch didn't do much for ROGUE's general organization, but while Vlokh might have been too eager to press forward at times, it would be unfair to blame him for the collapse to come. The hosts were simply living on borrowed time as they were forced ever more deeply into their own half, which Kévin Colin's solo breakout in the 39th minute couldn't mask. The Birds were ahead three minutes later, as
Paulino Trindade got
Hwang Teck Fu's whipped low cross into the net despite barely making contact.
This had the Birds 3-0 up by the time the two minutes of added time concluded, as their sustained assaults up the right paid dividends with interest.
Hein Thiha Pyae Ko had always looked good whenever left alone against Iranian centreback Ghabous Bahrami, and it was no exception in the 44th minute as he left Bahrami for dead on a
Chad Thach forward pass.
Hwang Teck Fu followed up in seconds, with
Wu Ping De presented a free run up the opposite side.
Damian Hutter replaced a largely-untested
Fu Wenlong for the second half, and proved perhaps the more useful in carrying the ball upfield with urgency. Still, Grilled Birds would continue focusing their offensives on the right, probably encouraged by the eagerness of
Paulino Trindade to get forward, as compared to the more-mellow
Jerome Crawford at least. A speedy overlap in the 61st minute did the trick for Trindade, as English fullback Eric Banfield was unable to keep up.
The Birds were just operating on automatic now, which might paradoxically have aided the smoothness of their play.
Mason Glendinning had been crowded out for much of the game, being often Grilled's most-advanced player, and his dropping back with Thach advancing likely allowed him to finally score some 72 minutes in.
Lim An Keng picked him out with a deft lob while threatening to surge into the box by himself, and Glendinning did it justice with a delicate bit of control to throw his marker off, before chipping it home with his other leg for 5-0.
Chad Thach had by the way been one of Grilled's most-involved players from central midfield, what with the Number Ten trying to claw his way back into a forward position in the Birds' league XI, after a mediocre season by his own lofty standards. The signs were good, certainly, from how he won the ball back from Jun Kimura's tackle in the 75th minute. His momentum took him away from goal, but that was no problem as he swung around to blast an unsaveable cannon past Goštaltavičius, from the right corner of the penalty area.
ROGUE 0NE were just in it to salvage some pride now, and they could well have gotten a consolation with the Grilled team winding down. Vadym Drozda, their most exciting player going forward by far, was felled by Trindade in the 79th minute, but Jun went it too safe with a tame lofted free-kick that was cleared by Hutter. Three minutes later, Serhii Holod got his first decent chance all day as he impressively lost both
Lim An Keng and
Jerome Crawford in turn, but his stabbed finish went a yard wide.
