八字万年历

Chapter 159: Back to Training (Post Lockdown)

Jason drove through the gates of the CTFD Portogaia and made his way to the parking lot, a slight feeling of nostalgia hitting him.

It had been almost three months since he had been here after all, but now he was back.

The world was slowly getting back to its feet after the threat of a virus that had the potential to spread to every corner of the world.

The lockdown period was nowhere near an end, but more people were allowed to move around now and the world was trying to pick up where it left off.

This of course affected the sports world as well as Germany was the first to allow for the resumption of the major football league and that had happened a few days prior on the 18th of May, 2020.

Everyone interested in football had been paying attention to the Bundesliga for a while to see whether this was a sign for the footballing world to get back on track, and for now, the answer to that question is yes.

The other major leagues in the world had begun scheduling their return after seeing the successful resumption of the Bundesliga and the FPF(Portuguese Football Federation) had first declared a potential return of the Liga NOS on the 28th or the 29th of that same month.

It had later been determined that the Liga NOS would return on the 3rd of May.

Unfortunately, only major leagues in the world were looking to resume already and other second-tier leagues of most countries weren’t scheduled for resumption at all as they did not have the facilities to follow the given safety regulations, nor were they ready to resume at all.

Of all the information flying around however, the only information that Jason was interested in was that he was soon going to be on the pitch again… unfortunately, there wouldn’t be any fans at the stadiums which took a lot of thrill out of the game, but Jason could live with that.

He just wanted to play, so when he received the message to be at the CTFD Portogaia for training, he made sure to ensure his presence at the training grounds as early as possible.

Just like before the lockdown period, Jason arrived early as usual, just before 8 am in fact, and just when he was thinking that he may be the first person at the training grounds, his eyes fell on a familiar visage.

“Hey Fabzy, how you been bro,” Jason called as he threw his sports bag to the side and walked onto the green where Fabio Viera was already juggling the ball.

Fabio Viera caught the ball with his foot and brought it to the ground, no longer juggling as he turned in the direction of Jason’s voice and Jason’s face came into view.

“Jayyyy, my bro, what’s up” Jason walked up to Fabio and they clapped their right palms against each other.

“You know we’re supposed to be doing that social distancing thing?” Jason said with a funny smile.

“If that was gonna do any good, then we might as well not have resumed training at all,” Fabio replied with a funnier smile and they both laughed loudly because though it sounded quite irresponsible, it was also true.

Football was a very physical sport and collisions were an inevitability, so if the players were going to be ‘social distancing’, then how were they going to regain possession of the ball from the opponent?

Also, every player who was to come to the training grounds today had taken Covid tests a couple of days prior and they were already cleared to be ‘Covid free’.

Thus the training grounds were already as safe as can be, but the safety regulations still had to be held.

Anyway, after greeting each other warmly and talking about some stuff, they got right into training.

There wasn’t much they needed to talk about as they had stayed in contact even during the lockdown period, so they got straight to doing a little training before the rest of the players and staff arrived.

Thus just like before the lockdown, Jason and Fabio engaged in some pre-training in the early hours of the morning, and before long, other members of the Porto squad began arriving.

The new arrivals greeted each other warmly as it had been a while since they had seen each other and some of them began doing warm-ups while the rest sat and waited for the manager’s arrival while discussing among themselves.

Since they had been away from training for months, it only stood to reason that the manager would want to address them on one matter or the other, thus it had been mentioned in the memo that the players had received that the manager wished to address them before training began that day.

Of course, the more diligent players like Jason, Fabio, Pepe, Telles, and a few others began doing warm-ups and a few training routines that didn’t require any equipment other than a ball.

As the training ground became livelier with every passing minute, Sergio Conceicao finally arrived along with his team of technical staff.

They were all kitted in NewBalance-sponsored Porto tracksuits, and all of them wore face masks.

There were also quite a few cameramen and videographers that followed after them, with the cameramen taking pictures and the videographers recording the scene.

Seeing the arrival of the head manager, the players didn’t need to be told to gather around before they all started moving towards the manager.

In less than a minute, both the players on the field already doing a bit of training, as well as the others who were just sitting around all, gathered around the manager, waiting for the manager to begin addressing them.

Sergio Conceicao first took a look around at all his players and his eyes noticed both the obvious and the slight changes in his players since the last time he saw them.

Some of the changes seemed to be positive, some were not, and some didn’t really matter, but for now, he couldn’t point out the changes since the cameras were rolling, but he did make a mental note to address them later, though they were already in accordance with his plans.

“It’s been a while guys…” Sergio Conceicao began his address,

“So… are you ready to get back on the title race?”