八字万年历

Chapter 267: 6th Week of Recovery

Despite not yet getting a goal, Porto had fully controlled the game and the Boavista players had hardly been able to step foot into Porto’s penalty box during the few times they had been in possession of the ball.

By the tenth minute, Porto had already registered three shots at the Boavista team with one of them being on target, but the Boavista hadn’t yet been able to register a single shot at the Porto team.

As a team with the qualifications to be in the top-flight Portuguese league, Boavista had slowly upped their efforts and were soon matching the Porto team in the later minutes of the first half as opposed to the first ten minutes of the game.

Every minute that passed, the end of the first half drew nearer but neither Boavista nor Porto had managed to get the better of each other’s goalkeepers.

After a few more minutes, the referee’s whistle blew loudly, bringing an end to a goalless first half.

Despite Porto having the upper hand for most of the first half, they hadn’t been able to convert their chances into an advantage for themselves and had ended the first half without registering a goal on the scoreboard much to the surprise of the viewers of the game and the dismay of the Porto fans.

After fifteen minutes of rest and reshuffling of game plans by the managers of the two teams, the second half finally began with another blast of the referee’s whistle.

Porto kicked off the second half and launched an attack.

The Boavista players were slow to react and couldn’t stop the Porto team who cruised past them and soon a grounded cross from the left of Boavista’s 18-yard box found Jesus Corona in front of the goal and he didn’t disappoint everyone’s expectations.

He quickly slotted the ball past the Boavista goalkeeper and ran off to celebrate his goal with his teammates.

The Porto fans immediately perked up and joined in the celebrations as their team had swept away all their unease merely two minutes into the second half.

The celebrations quickly came to an end and the match resumed, with the Boavista upping their efforts and trying to quickly get back on equal terms with Porto, but the Porto players invalidated all their efforts twelve minutes after their first goal.

Porto took a corner kick and Sergio Oliveira beat everyone in the air to get his head to the ball first and sent the ambling for the ball, but unable to stop the inevitable.

With that Porto doubled their advantage over the Boavista team.

The Boavista team that had been doing their best to try and equalize the game had now been pegged back even further and no longer dared to sit back.

They sent forward their players in droves, trying to overload the Porto team’s half of the field and pressure them into making mistakes.

Unfortunately for the Boavista team, Porto wasn’t a team that would easily crumble under pressure, especially against teams of their level.

The individual skills of each Porto player were displayed whenever they had the ball and they played the Boavista team like a fiddle.

The Boavista team wasn’t able to do much and could only chase after the ball as hard as they could, but this only tired them even further and the Porto players took advantage of that to begin attacking.

Pass after pass after pass until Jesus Corona found Moussa Marega in the penalty box with a high cross that Marega didn’t hesitate to head home in the 67th minute.

{GOALLL!!!} The commentator’s excited shout followed as the ball nestled in the back of the net while Marega was celebrating with his teammates.

After the goalless first 45 minutes of the game, Porto had gotten into their stride and had already put three past their opponents in half the time they had spent in the first half.

The Porto fans couldn’t be more ecstatic with the current state of things and even Sergio Conceicao had a rare smile on his face as he nodded while he watched his players celebrate their third goal.

Not stopping with a smile, he called Mylo who was on the bench, and told him to warm up and prepare to get into the game.

Normally, he wouldn’t make a decision to bring on a player like Mylo whose abilities weren’t clear yet in a match when it was more beneficial to rack up the scoreline, but this time, Sergio Conceicao was willing to let things run their course and use this chance to give Mylo some minutes on the pitch.

Of course, this was also a calculated decision on his part and wasn’t done out of frivolity.

The team’s line-up was a limited resource and he would only pick the best players that had the capability to lead the team to a win thus he could not keep giving Mylo a place on the team just because he did well in a few pre-season games.

The team was no longer lacking strikers and now the fight for a striker position was a survival of the fittest battle.

Mehdi Taremi had already started proving himself in the last match and though he had put Mylo on as well in the previous match, Mylo hadn’t been able to do much with the ball apart from get a few shots at goal, but Sergio Conceicao was willing to give him a few more chances to prove himself as he was still a greenhorn, hence his decision to bring Mylo on.

On hearing the head manager call for him, Mylo quickly warmed up, put on his jersey, and adjusted his laces before going to the manager.

Sergio Conceicao quickly gave him a few instructions while the match went on.

Soon the ball went out of play and an assistant referee held up the board to signify a substitution.

On the board was the number 27 in red and the number 20 in green.

Sergio Oliveira soon came running over and high-fiving Mylo before stepping off the pitch while Mylo ran onto the pitch.