八字万年历

Chapter 302: 2020/21 Liga NOS Matchday 6

*7:49 pm*

Today was Porto’s sixth match day of the Liga NOS campaign for the 2020/21 season, but Jason was just hopping off his treadmill after a five-minute high-intensity run.

Jason bent to his and placed his hands on his knees to catch his breath, the run having exhausted him quite a bit.

His muscles were screaming, especially since he had spent most of the whole day doing physical training.

As for why he had spent most of the day doing intensive physical training and was in his gym room at his house when the match was starting in just about half an hour… well, it was because he wasn’t a part of the squad.

The head manager had not just chosen to take him out of the starting line-up for that game, the manager had removed him from the lineup going to Pacos de Ferreira that day.

Since Jason’s return to the team, he had appeared in three matches, two of which he had played the full ninety minutes, but despite his contributions, or more appropriately, because of those contributions, the manager had to be extra careful to not allow him to get injured because of exhaustion and muscle fatigue.

Thus Sergio Conceicao had not added Jason to the provisional line-up for the match against Pacos Ferreira but had told Jason that he would definitely be part of the squad for the match against Marseille in four days.

Hence, Jason’s current situation.

He wasn’t happy either, but he was not yet at the level where he could voice his disagreements to the manager, and even if he was at that level, he still wouldn’t do it.

The manager was the one who held the reins at the club and everything he did was for the betterment of the team.

The last thing Jason needed was to be seen as someone who placed himself over the team because he was seemingly more talented than average and was performing well.

Thus he had accepted the manager’s suggestion which wasn’t really a loss to him anyway, after all, he had gotten a promise of involvement in a Champions League game.

Jason had headed home after the team had left for Pacos de Ferreira and come home to train at his personal gym and he had been going at it, pumping iron till now.

With the match starting soon, Jason put a stop to his training for the time being as he wanted to watch his teammates play.

He first headed to his bathroom for a quick wash up and then he headed to his kitchen to prepare some food for watching his match.

As a half-American, Jason couldn’t watch a screen and not be munching on something at the start.

Whether it was a show, a movie, an animation, or a match, he had to be munching on something at the start of whatever he was watching.

It was the American thing to do, and he wasn’t denying that half of his heritage… also he was pretty hungry and had not yet eaten dinner.

Luckily he managed to finish up before the match started and got to the front of his television when the players started matching out of the tunnel.

Jason sat and made himself comfortable on the couch as the commentator started calling out the line-up of the Porto team.

{Here’s the Porto side and not only has there been major changes to the team we saw last time out, but their shape seems different as well}

{Porto seem to be adopting a 3-4-1-2 formation for this match}

{They will still be using two upfront like before, but there will be an addition of an attacking midfielder who will be helping the two strikers up front}

{For the four midfielders, the two in the center will probably have similar jobs, but the two wide midfielders will not only have to help the team by attacking down the flanks, but they also have to protect their flanks as well as they have no one behind them to guard the flanks}

{We’ll also be seeing three center backs on the Porto side as opposed to the two that they usually use}

{With all that said, here is the line-up for the Porto team}

{Augustin Marchesin will be the ma in between the sticks, standing gallantly as Porto’s last line of defense}

{The three center backs guarding the backline will be the team captain, Pepe, the Congolese man, Chancel Mbemba, and the French loanee from Chelsea, Malang Sarr. It will be his first professional game for Porto and the fans will hope he hits the ground running}

{In center midfield, we have Romario Baro and Marko Grujic. Both of them are not major names in the Porto first-team squad and it’s Grujic’s first game for Porto after a successful loan deal bringing him over here from Liverpool for the season}

{In the wide midfield positions, we have Jesus Corona on the right, and a loanee from West Ham, Felipe Anderson, on the right}

{Up front, we have Mylo Baumgartner playing as a center attacking midfielder which is a completely different role from what we’ve seen from him so far}

{In the striking positions, we have a strike partnership between Moussa Marega and Mehdi Taremi}

{Looking at this line-up, I can’t help but think that the Porto manager is trying too risky of an experiment with starting the three loan players despite their quality}

{It seems like he’s resting quite a few players for the match against Marseille on Wednesday, but such a drastic change in the squad would affect the team chemistry a fair bit and this could provide an opportunity for their opponents in this game}

{Will Pacos de Ferreira be capable enough to cause such an upset against the defending champions of the Liga Nos though?}

{We will see at the end of the ninety minutes, for now, we have an exciting game ahead of us} The commentator gave his commentary as the players arranged themselves across the pitch while the captains were with the referee who was doing the coin toss.

Jason who was snuggled comfortably into his couch could not help but perk up after seeing the team’s formation and line-up.

He recognized the line-up because it was something they had been working on in training lately due to the lack of first-team level wingbacks in the team.

The wingback department of the Porto team was currently the weakest part of the team, especially after Alex Telles’ departure earlier in the season.

Wilson Manafa was currently the only experienced wingback on the team as Zaidu Sanusi had just arrived.

The remaining wingbacks were just academy graduates that Sergio Conceicao had brought to the team out of necessity.

He didn’t have much of a choice back at the beginning of the season.

Currently, Zaidu Sanusi is the team’s only left-back, and Wilson Manafa is the only first team-level right-back.

The manager had made Mattheus Uribe play in the right-back position a few times, but it was not his favored position and many complications had happened in matches because of that.

There was also the potential problem of injury which could throw the whole team off if either of those two guys got an injury.

Hence, Sergio Conceicao had proffered the solution of training another formation so that they could deal with any unexpected situations and the formation the manager had chosen was the one that the team was about to use against Pacos de Ferreira.

However, Jason didn’t expect the manager to choose to use this formation yet as they had barely started training in that formation a few days ago and they had merely trained it in passing.

They hadn’t really gotten down to it as they had other training sessions to focus on as a professional team, so it was a surprise to Jason that the head manager was already having the team use this formation in a match.

“Well, it’s not my business, I just hope no problems crop up,” Jason muttered as he put a glass of orange juice to his mouth.

At the Estadio da Mata Real, the pre-match formalities were already over and the Pacos de Ferreira team was about to kick off the game.

The Pacos de Ferreira striker, the Israeli, Dor Jan, stood over the ball and awaited the referee’s whistle that signaled the start of the game.

*Fweeeeeee*

{The referee’s whistle has been blown. Kick-off!} the commentator spoke as Jan passed the ball to a teammate immediately after hearing the whistle.

***

It had been ten minutes since the match kicked off and the match could not be said to be meeting expectations as there had hardly been a shot from the two sides.

The Porto team’s gameplay was currently lacking a lot of its sharpness and ease when in possession of the ball which was to be expected considering the major changes in the line-up.

This led to the Pacos de Ferreira team having the chance to have more possession of the ball than they should have, but despite having more possession than usual, it wasn’t easy to break through the Porto defense.

Pepe led the other two center-backs to do their jobs in keeping out the Pacos de Ferreira players, and so far they had been successful, but the Pacos de Ferreira was a professional team that was able to survive in the top-flight Portuguese league so they weren’t harmless to the Porto team especially now that they had been given a boost in the forms of Porto’s shaky midfield and lack of defensive cover on the flanks.

The ball soon found its way to Dor Jan who immediately chipped the ball over to the right flank where his teammate was making a run and had easily evaded Felipe Anderson.

As the Pacos de Ferreira right winger made a run inside Porto’s half of the field, Malang Sarr immediately ran out to block his path before he could get any closer.