八字万年历

Chapter 286: The Blue Side of Manchester X

It had to be said that Manchester City wasn’t a defensive team and the only way they managed to keep people away from their goal was by being the ones dictating the game and the occasional display of individual brilliance from their world-class defenders, but for the last few minutes, the Manchester City team had defied expectations in the defensive department as the whole team dug in at the back and somehow managed to keep the Porto team at bay despite the desperate efforts of the Porto players.

The Porto players sent players forward, sent through passes, tried to overload the Manchester City half of the field, tried to overload the Manchester City 18-yard box, played aggressively, and sent countless crosses into the Manchester City penalty box, but Manchester City stood against their every effort, waving them off like they were but mere specks of dust.

Yet, the Porto players didn’t give up and continued striving for that one goal that would allow them to share the spoils of the match.

On the left side of the field, Jason, Viera, and Zaidu Sanusi exchanged the ball among each other, trying to create some space to try and breakthrough, but Manchester City didn’t seem to want to budge.

Receiving the ball from Viera, Jason once again decided to try again and breakthrough from the wing.

As he brought the ball to a stop while shielding the ball away from Joao Cancelo, he finally made his move.

Making as if to turn towards the left before suddenly snapping back and sweeping the ball around and escaping Joao Cancelo, Jason immediately took off towards the Manchester City penalty box, but he wasn’t running for long.

Joao Cancelo had quickly recovered and chased him down before bringing Jason down with a sliding tackle just a few yards before he could step into the penalty box.

Jason tumbled over a few times from the tackle, and his annoyance flared up as he immediately got up despite the pain in his body from falling over and he began advancing towards Joao Cancelo, his anger taking over and making him want to send Joao Cancelo to sleep with a roundhouse kick.

This wasn’t the first time he had been brought down since he got on the pitch, but it was beginning to become very annoying, especially when his team was already losing.

Fabio Viera immediately intercepted Jason before he could reach Joao Cancelo, but Zaidu who was nearby went to intercept Joao Cancelo and it was clear that he wasn’t happy either.

{Tempers are flaring here!}

{I can’t say I blame the kid, he’s been brought down over five times already in this match despite this being his first match after his injury}

The referee soon came over to settle the matter after it almost delved into a full-blown fight between the two teams.

After showing Joao Cancelo his second yellow card of the game, followed by a red card and sending him off, the referee gave the Porto team a free kick.

Jason took the ball to the spot depicted by the referee and set it down as he was to take the free kick.

Due to the awkward angle of the free kick, Jason couldn’t take it directly and could only choose to cross, but with time running out, he couldn’t just cross the ball in and leave everything to chance so he decided to take a gamble.

Calling Fabio Viera over, he whispered a plan into his ear,

“I’ll cross the ball over the middle of the penalty box and let it dip only after crossing the middle of the penalty box, so just run over from the right side and try to catch it as it reaches you,”

“It’ll be best to catch it on the volley if we want to catch them by surprise,” Fabio Viera mused, adding to the plan.

Quickly getting over the specifics of the plan down in less than five seconds, Fabio Viera quickly ran towards the area where the other players were, but he stayed outside the penalty box, to the surprise of some Manchester City players.

They had seen him talking to Jason and thought that the two of them had come up with a plan, but with Fabio Viera waiting outside the penalty box, they couldn’t be bothered to send anybody to mark him when they had to put more focus on defending the penalty box, especially now that they were one man down.

The players were soon done arranging themselves and the referee blew the whistle to give Jason the go-ahead to take the free kick.

After raising a hand to signal to Fabio Viera, Jason ran at the ball and hit it deftly, sending it towards the pre-agreed location with Viera.

The ball flew into Manchester City’s penalty box where the players of the two teams ran at the ball, but before long, they noticed that the ball was flying a bit too high for it to be meant for someone in the middle, but that was Jason’s and Viera’s plan all along.

Fabio Viera had begun running into the penalty box from the right after Jason raised his hand and was already almost at the location where the ball would land when he noticed Mylo jump for the ball, intending to get to it with his head and with how high he jumped, it seemed like he would reach the ball.

‘That idiot!’ Jason and Viera immediately thought as they saw Mylo jump for the ball.

At the height the ball was, there was no way Mylo would be able to head it downwards which would mean the chance would be wasted as opposed to their almost sure plan to score.

Luckily, Mylo couldn’t reach the ball enough to head it towards the goal and it skidded off his head before continuing its flight towards Fabio Viera’s path.

Due to skidding off Mylo’s head, the ball rose a bit higher and would likely reach Viera at a higher position than he expected, but Viera could cope with that and immediately angled his body.

As the ball reached him, Viera whacked the ball first time with his left foot and sent it flying at the top right corner of the Manchester City goal.

{Viera!!!!!!!} Derek shouted as he saw Viera hit the ball.

{GOALLLLLL!!!!} Alan joined in as he and Derek shouted at the top of their voices into the microphone as they saw the ball smash into the back of the net, Ederson unable to reach it.

{They’ve equalized at last! And they’ve done it with a stunner of a goal}

{Absolutely fantastic attempt and effort!}

{This is a bitter pill to swallow for Manchester City!}

{Porto have validated themse-!}

{Oh what’s this!? the assistant referee has a flag raised for offside!}