Greatest Of All Legends-Chapter 651: Weakness II

Throughout the match, the players who had come up to mark him had maintained their distance and only came at him when he tried to get past them.

Additionally, instead of going for the ball, which would make it easier for him to dodge their tackles, they instead tried to insert themselves between him and the ball whenever he tried to push the ball past them.

While this could not completely stop him, it did slow him down... a lot.

Once he had been slowed down that much, the marker could then have a teammate join the press and steal the ball from Jason, or if there was no other choice, they would foul Jason instead.

All the goals scored had started with him, but they had all somehow ended up with him going down. In the first two, it wasn’t clear as he had been fouled clearly, but on the third goal, it was very clear what his marker had done.

Thus, after that third goal, Jason had changed his playing style and had spent more time passing to a teammate and making decoy runs to waste his marker’s energy instead of continuing to crack this tactic.

If he continued doing it ineffectively, other opponents would quickly notice this tactic and the games from today on would be very annoying.

’Not that they haven’t already noticed,’ he sighed again, covering his face with his palms, trying to stave off the fear that was rising in his heart.

He would never admit it audibly, but he was scared of becoming an average or a less than average player.

In his previous reality, he had become an injury prone player early on, which was why he avoided doing anything that could end up in a rough tackle.

If he was being honest, he was confident that whatever tactic was made to shut him out couldn’t shut him out half the time.

If he went up against another player, fu*k whatever tactic the other guy was using, Jason could still find a way past, however, one can never predict human beings.

What if, in desperation, a defender made a very harsh tackle to take the ball and he ended up injuring Jason, opening the Pandora’s box that was his injury proneness.

At worst, the defender would be given a red card and suffer a few match bans, but Jason’s career could start a downward spiral from there.

Jason had experienced it once... he didn’t want to experience it again.

’Never again,’ he sighed.

{And Dybalaaaaaaa!!!} The commentator’s shouts threw Jason out of his thoughts.

{Dying minutes, game already in the bag, but he chooses to pile up the misery!}

{He makes it for Uventus!} the commentator said excitedly as Dybala ran down the sidelines in celebration.

At this point, the fans had had enough and some of them began to get up from their seats, making a beeline for the exit. They were done for the day and didn’t want to wait any longer to see the game end even more unfavourably for them.

{The fans are getting up from their seats and beginning to leave. They think they’ve seen enough and I don’t blame them}

{Udinese has been vastly below par today. After a quick triple within the first ten minutes of the game, the fans were expecting their players to at least get one back, but for the eighty minutes that followed, they saw absolutely nothing but half baked efforts and terrible shooting}

{The manager is going to have to go back to the drawing board after this because if his players keep putting out stinkers like this, they may very well be at the risk of relegation}

The Udinese manager winced at the commentator’s words, after all, the man was right.

His team was mid-table, but they were in the bottom half, or more specifically, fourteenth on the table and thus were very much at the risk of relegation if they didn’t hold on to their spot.

Before the match started, he was optimistic in holding Uventus to a draw or a narrow loss at worst. Never did he expect this kind of trashing after all the preparations he had made.

Annoyingly enough, his tactics definitely worked as he had been able to keep the Uventus team silent for most of the match. Out of the first three goals, two were set-pieces and one was a lucky rebound goal.

If not for the bad decisions made by his players at the beginning that ended with the red cad, things would have gone very differently... or so he believed.

Unfortunately, the situation was way gone past the talking stage and now he needed to find a way to ensure that his team could hold on to their position in the coming games.

Luckily for the Udinese manager, despite the Uventus team’s attack coming back to life after Dybala’s goal and a few attacks that just narrowly avoided the back of the net, the game ended at 4:0.

With the game over, the reporters quickly rushed out to prepare for the interviews and Jason soon found himself dragged into an interview.

"Uventus wins again today and quite easily at that. What are your thoughts about the game and what it means for Uventus’s title run?" the reporter who was interviewing him asked.

"Uh, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it was definitely a comfortable win for us. They made a few costly mistakes that we managed to capitalize on pretty early, and the rest was well... history, as some would say," Jason replied the reporter.

"History indeed," the reporter nodded.

"Today was a bit of a quiet day for you on the scoreboard, Jason. You seemed to be struggling a bit going forward and some are even saying that Sanko had you in his pocket," the reporter said.

"Sanko? Sanko who?" Jason asked in confusion.

"The Udinese right back. His name is Sanko..." the reporter said hesitantly, clearly surprised that Jason didn’t know the name of his marker.

"Oh, was that his name... I probably forgot, I’m not very good with names. Anyway... Uh, football is... see, I’m a human being. These kinds of things happen,"

"I wouldn’t say he had me in my pocket, but yes he was definitely a tough opponent. All my markers are uh, they’re professionals,"

"Today just happened to be one of those days when he was really on his groove and that was enough to keep me wary. If a door is shut very tight and I don’t desperately need anything behind the door, then why keep banging on it, right?"

"With a our lead, what the team needed was control and if I kept going up against him and losing the ball, then things could get very ugly for us pretty quickly," Jason explained.

"Does that mean you’re admitting that you couldn’t get past Sanko?" the reporter asked immediately.

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