Bad week, got worse: Former hero Sandro adds to Kitchee’s blues as he helps Tai Po to a 3-0 Victory

Bad week, got worse: Former hero Sandro adds to Kitchee’s blues as he helps Tai Po to a 3-0 Victory

“Fresh” from defeat against Perak from 12 yards in their Asian Champions League qualifier, Kitchee’s week went from bad to worse as their grasp on the domestic title was weakened even more by a humiliating drubbing at the hands of Tai Po.

Salt was rubbed even further into the wounds of the Kitchee faithful by the fact that, former fan's favourite, Alessandro Leonardo (Sandro) was the principle architect of the victory for the Super Greens – scoring twice and looking dangerous throughout. 

The victory, their first against Kitchee in the league for over 8 years, sees Tai Po leapfrog the current titleholders into 3^rd place and they now find themselves only 3 points behind league leaders R&F (HK).  Meanwhile, Kitchee slip down to 5^th in the league and now find themselves 5 points off the pace.

How did they line up?

Despite the team having played 120 minutes and going through the stresses of a penalty shoot-out just 3 days prior, Alex Chu retained 6 of the same starting 11 that had played in Malaysia mid-week. This is in stark contrast to last season where Kitchee were able to name almost 2 different squads for ACL and League matches and still win games and must be testament to the reduction in the team’s strength in depth this season.  

This meant that Li Nga Hoi started in defence  alongside Tong Kin Man -  who were drafted in for Matt Smith and Law Tsz Chun respectively. These two played alongside Helio and Dani Cancela. 

Midfield saw both the influential Vadocz and Ju Ying Zhi keep their place and they were joined by Matt Lam - Matt deserving his place in the team following some impressive performances in the last few outings. 

Up front, Fernando was on the left side of attack, Lucas in the middle and Seo-Sang-Min, a january signing from Hoi King, played on the right. In goal, pretty much as always, was Wang ZP.

What happened?

On a gloriously sunny New Territories afternoon, a bumper crowd of near 2,000 didn’t have to wait long for the first goal with, returning Kitchee Talisman, Sandro making his mark for the Greens after only 2 minutes of play.  Following a cross from the right of the area, Sandro showed the Kitchee fans what they are missing, by fighting off Helio on the edge of the 6 yard box before calmly slotting home past Wang into the bottom left hand corner of the net. A great goal from a striker who was obviously extremely fired up to play against his ex-employers - and sadly a sign of things to come. 

Searching for an equaliser, Kitchee enjoyed some good possession but, apart from a good effort from Fernando on the edge of the box, failed to create any real meaningful chances. In fact it was Tai Po who nearly added to the scoreline with a couple of good efforts from Igor. 1:0 half time.

The second half started and Tai Po almost immediately found the second goal follow great play from Michelle Lugo.  The Brazilian, who loves to hate Kitchee, sauntered past the ghost like Kitchee defence and was only denied by a good save from Pang.

After this Tai Po were seemingly happy to sit back and absorb pressure and invite Kitchee onto them. Despite heavy Kitchee possession they really struggled to create any clear changes – the full time stats backed this up; showing the Blues had 22 efforts on goal but only 2 on target.  The best of these came when Seo Sang Min found himself one-on-one versus the ‘keeper and looked destined to score, only for Tsang Man-fai to turn the ball away for a corner.  

That miss proved fatal as from the resulting corner, Tai Po broke up field and saw Sandro in a foot race against Helio. Unfortunately for Kitchee fans, there was only ever going to be one winner with Sandro nudging the defender off ball and then progressing to clinically finish past Pang for his second of the game.  2:0.

Kitchee now piled on the pressure and nearly got one back but Lucas hit bar with a header from 7 yards out. Another chance came later when Dani Cancela delivered a wonderful cross into the box but Matt Lam could only direct his header over the bar. By this point it was clear it wasn’t to be Kitchee’s day and that was confirmed when Cancela clumsily fouled Igor inside the area for a penalty to Tai Po.  Igor stepped up and took the penalty himself to make it 3:0.  

A truly terrible day for the Bluewaves.