Greatest Of All Legends - Chapter 61

Chapter 61: Cracking the Line-up
**13th February 2020**

*7:12 am*

Jason arrived at the CTFD Portogaiaas the sun was finally beginning to warm up the early Portuguese morning, though its early rays weren’t having as much effect in warming the environment as one would like as it still felt very chilly.

Jason felt that the temperature was a bit below what he was used to, but it didn’t really matter much right now as his body would warm up enough once he began training and he would be able to push any thoughts about the weather to the back of his mind.

It was safe to say that the CTFD Portogaia training center currently looked quite empty as firstly, it was quite early, and secondly, due to the match that had taken place the day before, the players were obliged to a period of recovery, and rest so there wasn’t any team training scheduled for this morning.

Fabio Viera who used to be very early to the training ground wasn’t around as well since he had taken part in the Taca de Portugal match against Academico de Viseu the day before, so Jason was all alone on the training ground, but that didn’t bother him.

After his burst of emotions the day before, he had ended up spending his evening staring at water streaming along one of the rivers in Porto.

He had also ended up pouring out his grievances to Sofia when they were texting each other which was actually very strange to him as he never thought he would catch himself doing something like that his whole life.

He had never done it before, even in his previous reality so he found it quite strange that he could let down his guard and pour out so many emotions that he didn’t even know that he had.

The funniest part was that after he had done it, he felt like a heavy weight had been lifted off of his chest and he felt noticeably lighter, at least emotionally.

All the raging emotions that had been threatening to spill over were gone and it was like he was never even angry in the first place, but maybe it was due to that that he noticed that Sofia had more of a sway on his state of mind than he previously realized or had been willing to admit.

… Or maybe it was just that it felt mentally enlightening to pour out his emotions.

He couldn’t really tell as this was what one was supposed to feel after seeing a psychologist so he wasn’t completely sure, but he wasn’t going to bother himself thinking too much about that right now as it wasn’t the time for such things.

Left to him, what was happening between him and Sofia was happening a bit too fast and he would rather it dragged out a bit longer, but because he didn’t want to lose hold of what it would feel like was why he had bothered getting involved in the first place and now he wasn’t even dictating the tempo of the situation anymore.

He would still do his best to slow down whatever was happening between them though as he was more focused on his football right now.

Anyway, after “pouring out his heart” he had calmed himself enough to remember that the only way to make the manager change his mind about him was by proving himself even further in training and he would have to train even harder if that was the case so here he was back at the training complex when all other members of the team were taking a break.

He still felt quite annoyed at not being selected for the team’s line-up but there was nothing he could do than train harder and impress everyone on the team at every opportunity he got until there was no other option for the manager than to add him to the line-up.

**15th February 2020**

*2:47 pm*

The team had just finished the team training session and were now about to go on with their own individual training while others that didn’t have any individual training were free to do whatever they wished, but Sergio Conceicao suddenly called for the players after having a meeting with other technical staff to decide the team line-up that they would be taking along to the Estadio D. Afonso Henriques in Guimares, for the match against Vitoria de Guimares.

After deciding the line-up, Sergio Conceicao had the club staff gather the players into one of the available halls at the training complex team where team meetings were usually held.

He wanted to have a tactical meeting as early as possible regarding the tactics they would be using against the upcoming opponents so that they could practice a little bit before the game the next day.

With that thought in mind, he gestured for his assistant coach to hand him the notepad that contained the names of the players that had been selected for the line-up when he saw that the players were completely gathered in the hall.

After collecting the notepad, he waited for a few seconds for one of the staff to pull a mobile whiteboard towards him and hand him a marker as well before stepping back.

“Our match against Vitoria de Guimares is an away game, but we will still be using our 4-4-2 flat formation,” he began, quickly drawing eleven circles on the bottom half of the board in the 4-4-2 flat shape.

“Before going further to talk about our tactics for the game, I’ll first be calling out the line-up for the game,”

“In goal, we’ll be having Augustin Marchesin,”

“Our centerbacks for the game will be Diogo Leite and Chancel Mbemba. The left-back will be Matheus Uribe while our right-back will be Sergio Oliveira,”

“In center mid-field, we will have Danilo Pereira and Romario Baro. Our left midfielder will be Luiz Diaz and our right midfielder will be Jesus Corona,”

“The two strikers upfront will be Moussa Marega and Ze Luis.”

Sergio Conceicao paused for a bit to grab a sip of water from a water bottle, his throat feeling a bit dry.

The players who had heard their names in the line-up had slight smiles on their faces, but Jason who was sitting in the back along with Fabio, Pepe, Otavio, and Telles let out a sigh as he had not heard his name once again, but he still had some lingering hope as the coach had not yet called out the players who would be on the bench yet.

Soon, the head manager’s voice could be heard again after he put down his water bottle,

“On the bench, we have Diogo Costa, Pepe, Ivan Marcano, Wilson Manafa, Shoya Nakajima, Jason Bolu, and Vincent Boubakar.”