Greatest of All Legends

Chapter 110: First Start III

Unfortunately for Marega, despite muscling his way through the Santa Clara defenders, they still managed to disturb him enough that when he met the ball with his head, he wasn’t able to direct the ball properly, thus he could only head the ball just wide of the post, despite his unwillingness to do so.

Immediately he landed back on the ground and confirmed that he wasn’t able to score a goal, he had his hands on his head as he turned to the right wing to send an apologetic look at Jason.

Of course, the commentator wasn’t going to let him off so easily, and he quickly brought the stadium to life with his lively commentary,

{And Ohhhhh! A potential goal-of-the-season contender, if only}

{The winger made a splendid run and dribble to send the Santa Clara left-back into his grave before he sent the ball in with a beautiful curl, only to have his efforts wasted by a missed header by the striker}

{The striker is probably going to get a lot of stick from his teammates for that miss}

Jason was of course not happy about his efforts being wasted away like that, but he understood that these things happened every time in football, thus he didn’t overreact and simply shook his head a bit before reaching out to tuck away a clustered strand of hair that fell in his face as while it would probably make him look good, it would interfere with his vision as his hair was quite long, thus it needed to be tucked away.

After tucking the errant clustered strand away, he jogged back into the midfield, awaiting the goal kick from the Santa Clara goalkeeper, only barely glancing at his marker who was staying a bit closer to him than before.

‘That could be annoying,’ Jason thought internally as he was trying to do his best to avoid getting fouled incessantly after getting a knock in the last match.

He didn’t need such “intensive care” from opposing defenders after what he had experienced in the last match against Leverkusen as it was already a miracle that he wasn’t injured when a human tank like Jonathan Tah had made it a mission to keep him off the ball without caring not to foul him.

The goalkeeper soon sent the ball high into the air from the goal kick and play resumed with both teams trying to outplay each other and take the lead.

The Santa Clara team wasn’t toothless and tried to get a shot away at the Porto team whenever the opportunity arose, but they couldn’t compare to the dragons from Porto, so apart from getting three shots away with only one being on target, there wasn’t much else their efforts had amounted to by the 30th minute.

The Porto team on the other hand had gotten as many as seven shots but perhaps due to luck, or maybe incompetency from the players taking the shots, they had only gotten two shots on target, and needless to say, the two shots were easily scooped up by the Santa Clara team’s goalkeeper.

In spite of that, it was obvious that it was the Porto team that was currently the team with the reins at the moment as they bested the Santa Clara team in every stat.

They had more possession, more passes completed, more shots, more shots on target, more corner kicks… even the individual performance of the worst player on the Porto team was almost better than the best player on the Santa Clara team.

Porto just hadn’t scored a goal yet, but it was also clear to see that a goal from them wasn’t far off.

Despite playing as a bonafide forward since a winger was a “forward” in all rights, Jason hadn’t gotten a shot away as he had been more focused on supporting the team’s attacks rather than ending them as the final man.

He had been the connection between the other players and the forwards from the right side of the field, he had made decoy runs to free up space for other players when he was not with the ball, and had snaked his way through the Santa Clara defender’s when he had the ball, but so far had gotten nothing to show for it other than impressed cheers from the fans.

Yet despite this, Jason didn’t care as he was deeply enjoying the game, he was enjoying playing, he was enjoying running around in circles, and he was enjoying the crowds’ cheers.

These were all things that he didn’t get to enjoy in his previous reality, so now that he was being exposed to it, he was finding it hard to think of much else.

He was just about addicted to football glory at this point, thus when he received the ball again just a few yards after the center circle, Jason began driving the ball forward, ignoring his teammates.

As he made his way, towards the Santa Clara penalty area, he noticed that he was surrounded by four players, one in front, two by his sides, and one just behind him.

With so many players, marking him alone, Jason’s brain immediately clicked and he realized that some other players would be completely unmarked.

Just like he guessed, when he glanced around, he saw Ze Luis, Luiz Diaz, and Wilson Manafa completely free as they ran forward into the empty space, but despite this, Jason didn’t release the ball.

He kept running, constantly changing directions in between the players so that none of the Santa Clara players could easily tackle him and risk entwining themselves with their teammates, but as Jason approached their penalty area, the players rapidly lost their cool.

The player on Jason’s right was the first to lose his cool and attempt to tackle, yet the moment he committed to the tackle, Jason suddenly put his leg on the ball and turned himself along with the ball to avoid the standing tackle, skillfully executing a Cruyff turn.

Getting behind the first player was only the beginning of Jason’s challenges as the moment he came out of the turn, he saw the player on his left running at him, about to lunge into a tackle.

In that split second, Jason suddenly swung his leg back, as if to make a pass, but as soon as the player lunged into a sliding tackle, Jason suddenly stopped swinging his foot midair, faking a pass and cutting right, just barely managing to escape the second defender.

At this moment, Jason was already a bit out of breath as dribbling past professional players wasn’t an easy task, yet there was still a player standing before him.

Luckily, the player that was following behind him previously was now being blocked by the two players that Jason had just dribbled past, but even then, he didn’t have enough time to wait around as the ball would be snatched from him in seconds if he did.

Watching the player in front of him carefully, Jason did a sudden small jump before pushing his left leg forward slightly and then using his right leg to pass the ball into his slightly outstretched left leg, executing his own version of the “La Crocheta”.

The ball flew from his right leg before colliding with his left leg which had been slightly angled, before rolling speedily back to his right leg in less than a second, confusing the Santa Clara player just enough so Jason could accelerate past him speedily.

The player’s hand flew out to grab Jason as he noticed Jason getting past him, but Jason wasn’t going to let him ruin all his good work and slapped away the defender’s hand.

Upon getting past the player, Jason could finally see the Santa Clara goalie as he himself was just a few yards away from stepping into the penalty box, but there was just one weeny teeny problem.

There were still two defenders between Jason and the Santa Clara defenders and Jason immediately knew that he did not have enough energy or precision left in him to get past them at the moment, so he did the next best thing.

His leg snapped back and he rifled a powerful right-footed shot at the Santa Clara goal from 22 yards out.

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