Greatest Of All Legends-Chapter 649: Stunning Udinese III

#7th minute...

After kicking off once again, the Udinese team tried to calmly exchange the ball among themselves while the Uventus team once again burst forward on the press, which was uncharacteristic of a Serie A team.

Teams in the Serie A prided themselves on strategic defense. If a goal was scored, the team that scored usually had no qualms about defending for the rest of the game.

In that regard, Uventus had tweaked that setup a bit due to having players who were good at breaking forward, as well as Ronaldo, the world’s top scorer.

Hence they were more attack minded than most other Serie A teams, however, even they had times when they were just pressing for show and were actually consolidating their lead by strategic pressing, passing and defending, instead of all players except the strikers staying behind the ball.

At this moment, that was what they planned to do, but due to them rushing about with lesser energy, the Udinese players seemed to notice some space between the Uventus players and they tried to send the ball forward and break through.

However, the ball was quickly intercepted and once again, possession fell to Uventus.

After intercepting the ball, Alex Sandro passed the ball to De Ligt in the center, and the Udinese player who had just lost the ball immediately gave chase.

On receiving the ball, De Ligt initially wanted to pass the ball to Sczesny, but feeling a bit playful tried to dribble the rushing player. His goal was to waist time, and not actually dribble the player.

The moment it seemed like he would lose the ball, he would easily pass the ball away, but surprisingly, due to the Udinese player rushing forward, the small feint De Ligt did fooled him and sent him running the wrong way, opening space for De Ligt to pass the ball to a teammate in the center.

Without hesitation, De Ligt passed the ball to Bentacur, who in turn burst past an Udinese midfielder and sent the ball to Jason on the left flank.

As Jason neared the ball that was rolling towards him, he heard approaching footsteps behind him.

Not losing his cool, Jason let the ball roll into his leg while he turned, but as he saw a foot stretching towards the ball, he sharply pulled the ball away to dodge the tackle and then kicked the ball forward, darting past the player down the flank.

{Oh, he’s away!}

Since Jason was sitting pretty deep and was in his own half when the ball came to him, the player he had just dribbled was only the Udinese right winger and Jason’s actual marker, the right back was still in his path.

Like always, Jason didn’t plan to let that stop him and he calmly faced off against the player, but despite doing a few stepovers to try to confuse the defender, he noticed the man wasn’t budging.

With how hard the defender was staring directly at him, it became clear to Jason that the defender’s intent wasn’t to stop him from getting past with the ball, but rather to stop him from getting past at all.

Despite realizing this, Jason still moved to dribble past the marker, starting an infield run and then faking out and cutting back outside, but the Udinese defender stuck to him like glue and continuously tried to insert himself between Jason and the ball.

It was almost like he was saying, the ball can go, but you cannot.

After somehow managing to hold off the player till he was almost at the side of the penalty box, Jason gave up on pushing any further forward and forced a cross into the Udinese penalty box, yet even while he was kicking the ball, his marker elbowed his midsection, sending Jason to the floor.

Despite the pain in his abdomen, Jason instantly sat up to complain to the referee, but the referee gestured for advantage as the ball was still in the air.

{Cross to Morata! Header!} the commentator shouted excitedly, his voice increasing by a notch after every word.

The Udinese goalkeeper jumped at the ball and just barely managed to get a tip of his fingers to it, deflecting it slightly.

*Clang!*

The ball bounced off the bar and flew back into play, bouncing directly onto Ronaldo’s swinging foot.

{This one for the hat-trick!!!}

{Goal!}

{He’s done it!}

{Just four minutes since his first goal and eight minutes since the start of the game! They’re leaving no way out for their opponents here!} the commentator shouted excitedly as the Uventus players once again began another wave of celebrations.

Every Uventus fan watching the match could not help but feel like they were walking on clouds at that moment and even the Ronaldo fans could not help taking to their social media platforms to go and profess the greatness of their favorite player.

On the sidelines, the Udinese manager’s face had turned red and one could almost smoke coming off his head as his eyes blazed with righteous fury.

Unlike his silence up till this point, this time, he was about to let his players have it, but his assistant manager caught on quickly and quickly reminded the manager of where they were, helping him to regain control of his tongue and suspend the tongue lashing he was about to unleash till later.

Reminding himself that adding a scandal to the current sandwich of annoyance he was facing would only be worse for him, he opted to give orders to the substitute coming on and further gave directives to his players to go full defensive.

No matter what, they must not concede any other goals.

Luckily for the Udinese players, the Uventus players were content with stealing three goals in the first ten minutes of the game and also went on the defensive as well.

This gave the Udinese manager some boldness and he soon started calling out to his players to move the ball forward and go on the attack.

The chances for a fairytale comeback from three goals down and with one man less were probably less than 5% for his side, however, even that was enough.

Even if they could not manage a comeback, they could at least reduce the goal difference if they could get one or two goals back.

Read latest chapters at f(r)eewebnov𝒆l Only