Chapter 225: Dragon Style VII
Chapter 225: Dragon Style VII
{Splendid strike! Magnificent curl! Allan McGregor was rooted to the spot!}
{Earlier the Porto team had come just inches close to extending their lead, but they had been denied, yet now they take what was rightfully theirs!}
{The lead is extended to three and it’s an understatement to say the Rangers have an uphill task if they want to gain anything from this game!} The commentator delivered his commentary with as much excitement as Telles who was celebrating excitedly after scoring.
The Porto fans in their homes couldn’t stay in their seats after watching their team get a fourth goal against the Rangers team and in countless houses over Porto cheers of excitement could be heard from the Porto fans cheering frenziedly in excitement.
Currently, in the MSV Arena, one group of eleven players had big smiles on their faces as they celebrated their goal while the second group of players could not even keep a straight face and instead had all sorts of negative emotions ranging from sadness to disappointment on their faces.
The Rangers fans weren’t at the stadium but were experiencing the same thing as the players as they watched the replay of the Telles’ free kick.
At this point, the fans of the Rangers team had to admit that except the Lord Jesus Christ himself came down from heaven and started scoring overhead kicks, there was no way in hell that their team was gaining anything from this game apart from a shameful loss that looked set to be extended even further.This could be seen clearly in the body language of the Rangers team as they kicked off in the 60th minute of the game.
The Rangers team passed the ball around and even made efforts to attack but even as they were making such attacking efforts, there wasn’t any form of drive in their movements and they seemed to have accepted their loss and wished for the match to end as soon as possible.
The lack of fans cheering upon them at the stadium was one of the reasons for them giving up on the game already, but despite them giving up on the game, they didn’t display a lack of motivation in their defensive efforts.
They had given up on winning the game, but they weren’t willing to concede any more goals to their opponents no matter what.
Unfortunately, the Porto team didn’t seem to be done with racking up their goals and they attacked them incessantly, sending wave upon wave of attacks at the Rangers team but the Rangers defenders held out and kept the Porto team at bay.
However, this did not stop the Porto team from trying to break through and they sent a number of shots in the direction of the Rangers team’s goal but while some of the shots missed the target entirely, some of the shots were stopped by the goalkeeper and the scoreboard operators remained untroubled.
#72nd minute…
The game was currently at a standstill after Otavio had been fouled by Connor Goldson 25 yards away from the Rangers goal.
The referee had shown the Rangers defender a yellow card and had begun arranging the wall and this time it was Jason who stood over the free kick.
Alex Telles had been taken off a few minutes earlier and the mission of taking the team’s set pieces had fallen to Jason hence he was the one who stood over the free kick while waiting for the referee to arrange the wall.
This was not the first time such a thing was happening as ever since Jason scored his first free kick, he had been acknowledged as one of the dead-ball specialists of the team by the manager so he usually took over set-piece duty whenever Telles wasn’t on the pitch.
Normally, such a role shouldn’t fall to Jason, but due to the lack of players with the technical ability to take set pieces, Jason was able to take up the role because his crossing and long-ball accuracy were quite good.
Porto was filled with players who could finish a set piece either from a corner or from a free-kick, but Only Telles was good at taking free kicks for some reason.
Sergio Oliveira was usually the second choice for set pieces, but he was not always on the first team due to competition for the midfield positions in the team hence Jason who was more likely to start was given the role of second set piece taker.
The free kick was within shooting distance and was a bit on the left of the Rangers goal and Jason intended to take it directly while hoping that he somehow managed to get the ball into the net.
After his fluke of a first free kick that he scored, he had taken a few other free kicks for the team and he hadn’t been able to score them for peculiar reasons that he could identify but was having a hard time correcting.
Getting the ball to be accurate wasn’t a problem but with that much accuracy on his free kicks, the power of the shot was lost accordingly so the ball was usually easily saved by the goalkeeper of the opposition team, but if he tried to increase the pace of the ball so that it could get past the goalkeeper before he could reach it, his accuracy would decrease just as much.
He had not been able to find the right balance to get the ball fast enough while ensuring his accuracy was on point, especially since he had to be especially careful because of the wall of the players in his way.
He had asked for advice from Telles on how to go about taking a freekick with enough power and accuracy and he had been getting better at it, but his progress was very slow, especially since he didn’t have too much time to spend training his set piece skills when there were other attributes that needed work.
Thus for this free kick, he would have to try his best and hope that he could hit the target while making sure to add as much power as he could to the shot.