Chapter 307: Chronicles of a Fan: Tony's Bad Day II
Chapter 307: Chronicles of a Fan: Tony\'s Bad Day II
It was not his first rodeo and he had suffered heartbreak before so he knew that all he had to do was call his boys over, and drink away his worries while talking about and doing meaningless sh*t.
When he woke up the next morning, he would shelf this heartbreak into the deepest recesses of his mind and be on his way.
That was exactly what he had done… or planned on doing anyway.
His boys had come over and comforted him in a manly way, which was literally just them making fun of his situation till he had no choice but to join them in laughing at himself.
By the time they were ready to move on to their next agenda which was to drink themselves unconscious, one of them remembered that Porto had a game that evening.
Surprisingly, the whole group of friends were Porto fans so they had immediately decided to go lighter on the drinking for a while and instead watch the match.
They could drink themselves unconscious after their team achieved victory, right?
That was how much confidence they had in their team.Tony had taken his confidence a step further and gone ahead to open his 1xbet account on his phone and place a bet on Porto’s victory, hoping to use his winnings from the game to fatten up his savings for a bit so he wouldn’t have to worry much until he got another job.
“I should have known when I saw that formation and that line-up man, I should have known,” Tony almost cried to himself as he said aggrievedly.
“I know man, I got love for old man Conceicao, but what in heaven’s mercy was he smoking when he set that line-up,” one of Tony’s friends was as aggrieved as he was.
“A totally new formation, debuts from three new loan players, and he didn’t even play our better players! Did he think this was some training match!” Tony shouted in aggravation as he ranted.
“He didn’t start Oliveira, he didn’t play Diaz, he didn’t play Viera, he didn’t even play Jason!”
“All he played were those academy kids who were just fumbling over each other and couldn’t keep possession for one minute straight,”
“Of those three loaned players, only that Malang Sarr played a bit well, and even that was horrendous because we still conceded three goals, that Marko Gujic guy in midfield fully displayed why they don’t want him at his own club, and that Felipe Anderson!”
“Who let pencil leg come to Porto!?” Tony continued ranting once he unleashed himself in fury upon the Porto players and all his bitterness started flowing out of his mouth.
His words were extremely harsh and the Porto players were already catching stray bullets involuntarily.
“Righttttt! They hardly touched that ni**a and he got a broken leg,” a dark-skinned guy who was also in the store and trying to buy something could not help jumping in on the conversation.
“With spaghetti legs like that, it’s no wonder he couldn’t cover his wing and they kept playing past him like he wasn’t there until we were already behind by two,” Tony added in annoyance.
“Hey, at least he got a penalty for us,” One of Tony’s friends interrupted, trying to defend Felipe Anderson.
“And we still didn’t win!” Tony cut short his friend’s defense.
“When did we become so weak as a team to be losing to teams like Maritimo and Pacos de Ferreira, broooo,”
“We are currently six games into the season and we are not even in the top five! We were the champions of the previous season for fu*k’s sake,” Tony didn’t want to stop his rant.
“A lot of our players ended up leaving though,” another guy among the group of friends interjected, trying to make Tony see reason, but Tony had chosen to be blind for a while.
“And whose fault is that, huh?”
“If you are going to sell important players, then all you have to do is make enough profit so you can replace them with people that are up to par, not spaghetti legs Anderson, or that pussio from Liverpool,” Tony especially drawled out the last part of his sentence, adding a bit of an English accent flair to make it sound more insulting.
“In fact, why is every single loaned player from the premier league, there are other good players elsewhere,” he continued, wanting to pour out all the grievances he had faced today on the team.
“You aren’t talking about our own players though, or the players we just bought,” the first friend who had interrupted Tony earlier cut in with a wry smile.
“I’ve got nothing to say about those new transfers. We’re stuck with them so we might as well just wait for them to perform, but we can’t be paying those guys exorbitant salaries for their home team and still not have them play what they are worth” Tony said, hitting the nail on the head.
It was well known that the salary of Premier League players was a lot more than that of even the top players in the Liga NOS.
Pepe was Porto’s highest player yet he was only receiving 50k Euros in wages per week, which was less than the average amount a player of Leeds United would receive in the Premier League that season.
West Ham’s current average salary was about 115k Euros so even if Porto was just paying 50%, it was still more money than they were giving their highest-paid player, yet the player receiving said wage wasn’t giving out a top performance.
“Like what the fu*k man, if he just did half of what my boy Jason was doing, then I wouldn’t have an issue with the guy,” Tony said in an aggrieved tone.
“At least he tried man, just let it go,” Another of Tony’s friends sighed, tired of Tony’s incessant ranting.
“Let it go? Are you trying to compare Felipe with Jason? Like Dragon Rose Jason?”
“Are you kidding bro?” Tony asked like he couldn’t believe his ears.
“Jason’s worst performance is better than whatever shit that Felipe guy played out there today. He should have played man,” Tony drawled, not letting off.
“And then he should have gotten another injury? Can’t you see that the manager was resting players for the Champions League game? Jason would probably leave at the end of this season anyway, he’s already receiving interest from other teams with his performances,” one guy had finally had enough and decided to shut Tony up for good by hitting where it hurt and he hit the target as Tony went quiet.
“…”
“… It’s not like we’re going to win the Champions League anyway,” Tony spoke again after a period of silence, wanting to get back at his friend who had silenced him.
“Oh for Fu*ks sake!” The whole group of friends exclaimed at the same time as they turned on Tony.
“Shut up, will you?” one of them said after.
“Just let it go man, we can’t change anything now,” another one said.
“This is probably why your girl went looking for another dick, cuz your stupid a** talked way too much,” the third guy didn’t have a filter on his mouth and just let his annoyance take over leaving the whole group of friends staring at him with their mouths hanging open.
Everyone went silent as they stared at Tony to see his reaction.
“…Fuck her and fuck her new boy toy, let’s just get some drinks and get drunk, I don’t have to go to work tomorrow anyway,” Tony rolled his eyes as his friend’s words sucker-punched him back into consciousness.
“You don’t have to go to work?” One of his friends asked.
“Didn’t I tell you guy? That I was fired today?” Tony asked in surprise.
“No wonder you’re so angry, anyway, let’s get some drinks, you can’t worry if you’re drunk,” one of them said as they started packing drinks from the shelves.
***
**31st October 2020**
*10:23 am*
Abuja, Nigeria…
In the head office of the Nigerian Football Federation, Gernot Rohr, Nigeria’s national team’s head manager was seated in his office, perusing through some papers on his table.
There were quite a few stacks of files on his table and Gernot had to go through them as they held information about players with Nigerian origins.
Currently, Gernot Rohr was trying to pick the players that he would call up to the national team for the upcoming international break where they had a qualification match to play against Sierra Leone for a place in the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations Tournament(AFCON).
Gernot Rohr was taking his time to pick out the players as he knew that lately, the reception he had been receiving from the NFF’s management had been quite cold due to his inconsistent results.
Moreover, it had been four years since he became the manager of the Super Eagles, making him the longest serving coach of the Nigerian National team since it’s inception, yet he didn’t have a single trophy to show for it despite the fact that he was coaching Africa’s strongest team… or at least they looked that way on paper.
It was time to take some risks if he wanted to keep his job, he thought to himself as he kept his eyes on one particular file that he had taken extra time to read through earlier.
“Seems I have to call in quite a few favors for this one… I hope he accepts,” Gernot muttered as he picked up his phone, his eyes still on the file.
On the file was the name “Jason Bolu” written in bold letters.