八字万年历

Chapter 343: A Step towards AFCON 2022

There was laughter, smiles, and excited conversations going on in every part of the room.

Someone was even playing music on a huge Bluetooth speaker that had been brought along by the players.

Jason was also in the room and was trying to change out of his jersey, but Osimen had an arm around his neck and was talking excitedly with Ahmad Musa, Iwobi, Moses, and Troust-Ekong.

Osimen’s excited actions weren’t allowing Jason whose excitement had calmed down, to be able to change out of his clothes.

It wasn’t that Jason’s excitement from the match had suddenly vanished, but he had managed to calm himself and was a bit less active now, though the smile on his face refused to go away even as his neck was being pulled around by an excited Osimen.

In Osimen’s other hand was the Man of the Match award which had been given to him after the match.

To the match officials, Osimen’s two goals and one assist were more deserving of the man-of-the-match award as compared to Jason’s two assists and one goal, but Jason didn’t have any issues with it.

It was pretty close anyway and no one could say who was more instrumental, or who was more deserving of the award.

Jason could argue that he was more deserving, but his two assists wouldn’t have been assists if Osimen hadn’t sent the ball into the back of the net when Jason sent it flying his way.

In this manner, Osimen wouldn’t have scored if Jason hadn’t sent the ball his way.

The same could be said about Osimen’s assist and Jason’s goal, so it was a bit confusing and quite a few people would argue that the award should have been handed over to Jason, but well…

Jason wasn’t even in the mood to care about the man-of-the-match award and was already almost imagining himself receiving a Puuskas award for scoring that beautiful goal.

The goal was constantly replaying in his head and Jason already knew that he was going to watch the replay of the goal on his phone until he went to sleep.

“Mus, you see how this guy just dey fly?”Osimen was still excitedly talking to Ahmad Musa when Gernot Rohri finally came into the locker room.

It seemed he was finally done with the post-match interviews.

Jason, Osimen, and a few other players had already been interviewed a bit after the match, but they had long been released as there wasn’t much they would be asked compared to the manager, hence they had arrived at the locker room earlier.

“Good work out there guys. Your collective efforts to turn the game around did not go in vain and we were able to avoid a loss, keeping us on track to qualifying for the AFCON,” Gernot Rohri began.

“Please a round of applause for our captain who helped to keep morale high and keep pushing,” Gernot said and his words were followed by a round of applause while Ahmad Musa, the recipient of the applause raised a hand and smiled.

“Also, our man of the match who put in two goals that helped us in our comeback journey, as well as an assist that helped us finish our opponent,” the head manager continued and another round of applause sounded through the locker room again.

“… And finally, our newest member, who not only pulled off two assists after coming off the bench… but also scored an absolute beauty of a goal that won us the game!” the applause this time was the loudest and Jason’s smile involuntarily grew a bit wider and a few tears even threatened to drop from his eyes but he quickly reigned it in.

It wasn’t that he was emotionally weak, or that the goal was that big of a deal… Rather it was the cumulative effect of everything that had happened till now.

Ever since he had gotten this second chance, he had taken things slowly and done everything step by step and this path had led to him not having his professional debut for over ten years because he was training himself for the big stage, yet he had persevered, but now everything was happening so fast and in less than one year since his professional debut in this life, he had crossed so many milestones that he never even sniffed in his previous life.

He had joined a top team in one of the top leagues in Europe,

Become an important member of the team,

Won a league title with them,

Played in the Europa League,

Played in the Champions League,

And now, he had just had his first international cap and it was nothing short of a huge success by any standards.

These were all things he couldn’t even get close to achieving in his previous life, so there was no way he was completely unmoved when he reminisced on all that had happened so far.

Luckily, he had enough emotional strength to keep the tears in check and he simply smiled happily as the manager kept giving out accolades to the players.

The manager finally finished speaking and the players started getting ready to leave.

Throughout the manager’s post-match address, the manager hadn’t mentioned the negatives of the game, but the players knew that it was probably because the manager chose to discuss such matters at training instead of talking about it at the moment and reducing morale.

The Nigerian players did not take much longer in the locker room and were soon filing out of the room and getting on the bus, wanting to head back to their hotel for some food and rest.

The time was just around 9 pm so the streets were filled with lights as the bus drove back to the hotel.

The roads were still pretty active and this was not the worst of it.

Lagos had a particularly active nightlife among the Nigerian states so one could almost guarantee activities on almost every Lagos road at any time of the night.

However, the nightlife of the city didn’t concern the Nigerian players as most of them were too tired to even think about having a little fun that night.

As for the ones who had the energy to care, they’d have to wait until they reached the hotel to attempt going out for some fun as the manager would not want the players loosening up too much at night clubs and the likes at this moment.

Gernot Rohri had already given the players a day off, but that didn’t mean he wanted the players to spend their off-time doing particularly wild things, or taking alcohol which was a given if they went out to experience any form of night-life.

If any of the players had any plans, then they were planning to sneak out.

All that was however of no concern to Jason who was already feeling sleepy and by the time he got to the hotel, he only barely managed to stuff himself with some food before heading to his room, intending to crash onto his bed and not awaken for quite a few hours.

However, before the waves of sleep could drag his consciousness into oblivious depths, his phone suddenly rang, prompting Jason to alert.

He was annoyed that he was receiving a call at that moment, but he still dragged his arm towards his phone and picked it up.

Seeing that it was his aunt who was calling, he didn’t hesitate to swipe the green button and put the phone to his ear.

“Hell-o,” Jason spoke first with a little smile on his face.

{Hey, how did your match go}Daphne asked as she heard Jason’s voice.

“It was good, how’s your side?”

They exchanged pleasantries and spoke a bit before Daphne finally began talking about the secondary reason she called Jason.

{Are you free tomorrow by any chance?} She asked Jason.

“Kinda… why do you ask?” Jason replied with curiosity.

{Don’t you remember what tomorrow is?} Daphne replied with another question of her own.

“It’s not my birthday… It’s not yours either…” Jason’s brain went into overdrive as he tried to remember if there was anything important happening the following day.

{*Slap*} the sound of Daphne’s facepalming could be heard over the phone and made Jason smile wryly as he couldn’t remember anything.

{I told you a few months ago that your cousin was going to be getting married this year, didn’t I?} Daphne said in an exasperated tone.

“Oh, ohh… Ohhhhhhhhhhh,” it finally clicked that she had said something about it at some point in time, but he hadn’t paid attention to it as he had not been especially inclined to attend.

“Wait, that was tomorrow?” He asked in surprise.

{If 14th November 2020 is tomorrow on your calendar then yes, it’s tomorrow} Daphne replied sarcastically and Jason could almost hear her roll her eyes.

“… Well, damn… Wait… Didn’t you say you were going to attend the wedding?” Jason suddenly remembered that part of the conversation as well.

{…Yes, I am going to attend}