Greatest of All Legends

Chapter 607: A First Leg Loss

*Fweeeeeeeee!*

{There it is, the final whistle}

{It is over, and Borussia Dortmund make it through the first leg of this tie with a one-goal advantage over Uventus!}

{Uventus tried and tried, but the equalizer just wouldn’t come, and now they have to wait till the next leg to take another chance at their champions league dream!}

{One thing is for sure, this is far from over} the commentator remarked as play stopped after the referee’s whistle.

Jason sat down on the pitch right where he was after the referee’s whistle, breathing hard and trying to remember when he had ever been this tired.

This was probably the most intense match he had ever played and he had played every single second of it.

Annoyingly enough, his team had still lost despite him giving it all out on the field.

‘I’m way out of my element,’ he sighed and pulled out the band holding his hair together.

As he sat there, he tried to re-run the match in his head and try to figure out the reason behind his team’s loss apart from their bad luck.

It was clear that they had outplayed their opponents and deserved a win, but they had still lost.

Before he could delve farther into his thoughts, he was interrupted by a voice.

“You were good out there, man,” Bellingham, who had walked up to Jason, said.

“… Yeah, you too,” Jason nodded.

‘You were a pain in the a** to say the least,’ he thought as well as Bellingham had been one of the more annoying players who kept him in line.

Bellingham didn’t play like a professional defender, but he had an annoying knack for tracking Jason’s movements and being there to steal the ball whenever Jason tried to dribble past any other player.

It was the reason why Jason continuously dribbled out wide, always avoiding cutting in too early because he was sure Bellingham would be there.

“You really made him look like a lost puppy,” Bellingham muttered.

“What?” Jason asked, having not clearly heard what Bellingham said.

“Noghing, don’t worry about it,” Bellingham waved it off.

“Hmmm…” Jason raised an eye at him.

“Anyway, wanna swap shirts?” Bellingham quickly changed the topic and held out his hand to Jason.

“Oh, uh, yeah,”Jason replied and took his outstretched hand, Bellingham pulling him up.

With Jason back on his feet, they both took off their shirts and exchanged it for the other’s.

“Next game will be different though,” Jason said to Bellingham after receiving his shirt.

“What, you’ll cry next time?” Bellingham smirked confidently.

“You wish,” Jason chuckled, but he didn’t say more.

His words weren’t meant for Bellingham, but rather for himself.

He was making a declaration to himself, and he had said it out loud so that it felt real. Bellingham was the one who had confused the situation and thought Jason was speaking to him.

Jason didn’t plan to correct him though.

Bellingham soon ran off to join his teammates, while Jason went to join his own teammates as well.

The Uventus fans did not leave immediately and stayed behind for a few minutes to encourage their players, but after a little while, the fans began to leave.

The players were also already in their locker room.

“Well guys, it’s not the result we wanted, but I can’t fault your performance. If we can just brush up a little, we still have every chance of winning the second leg,”

“For now, we’ll rest, and we’ll go into the details at the next training session,” Pirlo addressed his players and then left quickly as he had things to do.

The players on the other hand, quickly began to clean up, preparing to leave the stadium.

***

**9th April 2021**

After a day off to recover from their exhaustion, the Uventus players were back at the Continassa for team training session, but before the training began, the manager had called the players to a meeting room.

“Good morning everyone,” Pirlo greeted the players as he walked into the wide meeting room and headed straight to the front of the players, all business.

“In our last match, we lost against Dortmund. Can anyone tell me why?” Pirlo asked, getting down to business immediately.

“Fede?” Pirlo asked Chiesa, seeing that no one spoke up.

“Hmmm?Uh, bad luck?”Chiesa replied, scratching his head.

“That’s part of it, but we can’t always blame our luck for losing games, so anyone else?”

“Christiano?” Pirlo asked Ronaldo next.

“We didn’t give our best out there. We should have played better,” Ronaldo replied.

“Well, that much is obvious, but it’s not the answer I’m looking for. After all, we dominated the game but still didn’t win,” Pirlo retorted.

“With how we played that night, we could have won the game, however, we didn’t,”

“So, anyone else has anything to say, perhaps you have the answer I’m looking for?”

“Huh? Kennie? Juan? Aaron?” Pirlo asked the players, still not satisfied.

“… Maybe we should have put the game to bed earlier?” De Ligt said unsurely.

“Yes! That’s it! That’s the one!” Pirlo agreed enthusiastically with a nod.

“But we did score earlier though, but it was offside… twice,” Chiesa said.

“And that’s why I said bad luck was part of our problems, but it’s not the only problem we have,”

“Look back at our last few games. Almost every match we’ve won lately has started with us scoring in the first half,”

“We’re Uventus, we dominate,”

“We always begin every match with dominance, and normally, we get at least one goal in the first half. This allows us to switch from a high intensity game play in the first half to a more relaxed pace in the second half where we focus on keeping control of the game and playing on our own terms,”

“This way we can conserve energy and keep pressuring our opponents enough to unsettle them and prevent them from settling into their game and then striving to equalize this game,”

“Often times, we score more and end with a win, but in the last game, that didn’t happen,” Pirlo had delved into explanation at this point and the players and other staff were listening attentively.

“When the match against Dortmund began, we scored first, but it was offside…” he paused.

“It didn’t count…”