Chapter 188: Road to Liga NOS Champions 2019/20 XV

Chapter 188: Road to Liga NOS Champions 2019/20 XV

Chapter 188: Road to Liga NOS Champions 2019/20 XV

The Porto team quickly ended their celebrations and the match soon kicked off once again, but this time despite Porto’s momentum, the Tondela team began fighting back more than ever, proving to be quite the headache just minutes after the kickoff.

The Tondela team’s players were not willing to just lay down and take their defeat and going behind by two had put them into a state similar to desperation and this brought out some extra effort from them as they began to put the Porto team’s defensive line to the test.

By the 75th minute of the game, which was ten minutes after Porto’s second goal, the Tondela had recorded an extra 4 shots with two of them being on target while the Porto team hadn’t had more than two shots that were not even on target.

It was clear that during the last ten minutes, it was the Tondela team that was on the front foot which was contrary to everyone’s expectation, but just as the Porto fans were thinking that their players would soon take back control of the game, an unexpected situation came up.

In a bid to stop a Tondela player from going past him and getting through on goal, Danilo Perreira tackled the player a bit harder than usual and carelessly swept the player off his foot before he even touched the ball.

Needless to say, the referee immediately called for a penalty and also showed Danilo a yellow card.

The Porto players immediately went to the referee to argue about the penalty even though they knew that a penalty was actually the correct decision from the referee.

The referee, however, didn’t budge, though he ended up consulting the VAR to assert his decision to the Porto players.

In the end, Ronan from the Tondela team stood behind the ball to take the penalty for his team while everybody else waited outside the penalty box.

*Fweeeeeee*

Ronan ran at the ball and swung the penalty to the bottom left corner of the post while Augustin Marchesin stood rooted to the spot.

Without any effort from the goalkeeper to stop the penalty, the ball slammed into the back of the net while all the Porto players could only watch, but they didn’t lose their cool since they were still in the lead.

By the 88th minute of the game, the Porto team had pushed the Tondela team so far back that the game was only being played in the Tondela team’s half and the last time the ball crossed the halfway line was more than a minute ago, and that was because the Tondela goalkeeper had taken a goal kick and had sent the ball into the middle of the field.

At this point, the hopes of the Tondela fans were almost dead, but some of them still believed that it was possible for their team to get at least an equalizer and that all they needed was a single slip-up from the Porto team.

The Porto team however weren’t going to give them that chance.

Their concentration was at its peak as they kept the pressure on the Tondela team because contrary to how it looked, the Tondela team was actually holding up well since they hadn’t conceded or made any major mistakes despite how much they were being pressured.

It was very annoying for the Porto team to have this much possession and control and to be unable to put the ball past their opponents due to how tight their defensive backline was, but because of this, they knew that they couldn’t afford to slip up because at least this way, they could run down time and still take the win.

However, not all players on the Porto team planned on simply running down time.

One of those players was Jason.

He had been unable to get a goal in the last game and with this game running out, it would become two matches in which he hadn’t scored a goal.

It might be a bit petty or childish, but for Jason who strove to become the best there ever was, he didn’t like the thought of going two games without scoring a goal.

Even the fact that he had made two assists in the previous match didn’t ease up his desire to get the ball past the keeper, because, despite everything that people said about football, scoring goals was the only way to get acclaimed as the best of all time.

All that talk about assists and all that was okay, but football was inherently a game where the objective was to outscore your opponent and the only way to outscore your opponents was to score goals in the first place.

Jason wholeheartedly agreed with this point of view so, at this moment, his eyes were scanning the whole Tondela back line for a crack in the formation that he could slip through.

One thing was for sure... he wasn’t planning on letting the Tondela players go with just two goals.