Manager paquebot of AS Uijeongbu 07 was busy over the off-season, not only bringing Argentinian midfielder Kyung-Ho Lee to Waegari Park but also helping to lay the foundation for a new club altogether: Mighty Karak Chai FC. A press release from the club had this to say about its origins:
✈ An account in the Samguk Yusa tells of an Indian princess who left her home in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh and traveled to the southeastern corner of the Korean peninsula. This princess, Heo Hwang-ok, brought a tea plant with her on the journey and married King Suro of the Gaya (Karak) Confederacy after arriving in the year 48 CE.
Spring forward 1,965 years and manager paquebot in Korea has made the same trip but in reverse — founding Mighty Karak Chai FC in Princess Heo’s homeland of India.
Our initial plan was to locate the club in the region of Uttar Pradesh, but upon finding that there is a Gaya District in Bihar the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. So here we are, Mighty Karak (Gaya) Chai (Tea) FC of Bihar, India.
Preparations for the season included a series of seven exhibition matches against opponents from the HTUM federation before the club played their first competitive match this afternoon against Nagaland in the Indian Cup.
(425691935)
Karak fans yearned for a victory and were ecstatic at the final whistle, as Karak came out 0-4 winners against their rivals from North-East India. It took 38 minutes to open the scoring – Ranjiv ‘Wraith’ Patel “nonchalantly” scoring Karaks’ first-ever competitive goal – but when the ball found the back of the net it was the traveling fans that were yelling in delight.
Rajiv Patel has no soul, it's just an empty labyrinth of oblivion.
Nitin ‘Socrates’ Ghosh then grabbed a brace from the penalty spot and Shankar ‘Saint’ Shetty finished the scoring in the 87th minute following a mix-up by the Nagaland defense. While everyone at the club is thrilled to have advanced to Round 2 of the Indian Cup we will face a much sterner test on Sunday, as our first clash in series IV.32 is against last season’s champions DeadlyDecimators. Their side is too strong for any formation we might put out at this point in the club’s development, so Coach Gosavi has been instructed to focus entirely on training and building team spirit for the future.
However, that won’t stop us from cheering on the team come match day.
Not Afraid of Fire
(432631193)
Following a straightforward 0-4 win in the Indian Cup Mighty Karak Chai FC began their challenge in IV.32 against DeadlyDecimators and came amazingly close to an opening day upset. Mighty Karak were leading 2-1 at the start of the 89th minute, but flagging stamina allowed the home side to score twice in the final minute to snatch all three points in a 3-2 victory.
Despite commanding the lion’s share of possession (70%) the home side were left impotent in front of goal throughout the first half — Anil Shetty in particular missing two good chances to score in the first 45 minutes. On the other hand, Mighty Karak were much more clinical in front of goal and miraculously found themselves in the lead at the break. Rijav ‘Wraith’ Patel scored first and Sharat ‘Iguana’ Ghorpade doubled the advantage on the half-hour mark from a Winger+Pass SE.
Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be and Mighty Karak were undone in the space of a minute when the home side scored twice from three chances in the final minute of play. (There may have been an unnecessary amount of stoppage time involved — we can’t say for sure as were more focused on the action than the clock at the time.)
Although goalkeeper Sher ‘Khan’ Khar received a poor review from the match commentators after the match it should be noted that he did keep the far superior DeadlyDecimators from scoring for most of the match. Not bad for someone with poor stamina and wretched keeping skill!
Sher 'Khan' Khar in the middle of a cat nap.