Greatest Of All Legends

Chapter 869: Answering the Call-Up

***3rd January 2022***

**4:02am**

The screeching sounds of the rubber penetrated the shield of soundwaves that was Jason’s headphones as the plane’s tires touched the ground, indicating a successful landing on Nigerian soil.

For Jason however, it wasn’t the end of his journey as he would still be travelling to Akwa Ibom state where the Super Eagles training camp would be holding for the next three days.

Thanks to not having played at all in the game against Watford, he didn’t have any post match stress to take care off and his flight was scheduled for 11pm on the second, but it was a long flight and by the time he finally arrived in Nigeria, it was already the next day.

The domestic flight itself was only about an hour, so Jason finally arrived at Akwa Ibom state just after 5am and for Jason, that simply meant a much lower chance at been seen or recognized.

There was a car ready to take him to the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel where the other players were staying and after checking in at the desk, Jason hit the sack immediately.

Despite having slept a little on the plane, he was still tired from the flight and knew that there was no way in hell that he would be waking up in another two or three hours to join the first day of the training camp.

"Whenever I wake up is when they see me, I guess," he muttered to himself as he shut his eyes drowsily and sank into the endowed bosom of the goddess of sleep.

***

"... Well fu*k," Jason cursed in a sleep voice as he looked at the time on his phone after waking up.

[1:37pm]

Clearly more tired than he realized from the flight, he had slept quite a bit.

’The others are probably already out training,’ Jason thought with a yawn, still a bit sleepy and feeling like he could sleep another few hours.

Groaning, he fought the urge and dragged himself off the bed and to his feet, walking to the bathroom while pulling off his clothes.

One of the cool things about being a football player like him was the fact that every hotel he stayed at always had a whole new set of bathroom essentials so he didn’t have to start rummaging through his bag for a toothbrush.

With how drowsy he was, if he had to do that, he’d rather go back to sleep.

After a cool shower to wash away his sleepiness, he changed into casual wear, grabbed his boots and stepped out of his room.

The stadium was about 34km away from the hotel and since he didn’t have any plans of running 34km on a sweltering afternoon, he had the hotel get him a car that took him to the stadium.

The training session had long started and was already nearing it’s end, Jason figured as he was led into the stadium by one of the staff at the stadium.

To Jason’s surprise, the media still hadn’t left when he arrived so they captured the moment he entered the stadium, but they couldn’t follow him into the stadium.

After walking for a while, Jason finally stepped out from the tunnel onto the green and stopped on the sidelines to watch the boys in green do some training on the field.

The official media houses had already been disallowed into the stadium, but the National team’s own media team were recording some shots for promotional events and were thus able to capture the moment Jason arrived.

First, he headed out to the field to greet the guys already training and then took a minute to speak to the new manager... well, interim manager.

For reasons Jason hadn’t been paying attention to, Gernot Rohr had been dismissed by the NFF in December and former international Augustine Eguavoen took over as interim head coach.

As far as Jason heard, the NFF were already in talks with some guy named Jose Peseiro, but nothing was confirmed yet and it was highly likely that they would be heading to the AFCON with Augustine as the manager.

For Jason, the decisions of the NFF didn’t matter much, but he hoped that the manager had a reasonable capability to command his squad and create tactics that worked for them.

Anything else was secondary.

After saying a quick greeting and setting a time for further discussion, Jason headed back to the players.

"Shame about Victor, he’s really down about missing this AFCON," Alex Iwobi said to Jason.

"Yeah, I saw. Spoke to him a bit ago and he’s recovering well at least. He really tried to force his return as he felt like he could play if he put a mask on, but his club wouldn’t let him,"

"I wouldn’t advise it either," Jason said, shaking his head in pity.

"Man, that’s mad. I can’t even blame him, injuries are the worst," Iwobi sighed.

"Tell me about it," Jason laughed.

Both he and Iwobi had just returned from injury and barely made it to the squad for the AFCON tournament, but while Jason had returned and had begun putting out good performances, Iwobi still looked a little shaky from the injury and he wasn’t sure if he would even have been called up.

Luckily, he was in the new manager’s plans and had been called up for the tournament, but as for how many minutes he would actually get, he would only know after the tournament began.

Despite joining the team at the stadium, Jason couldn’t get much training done since they were almost done for the day, but that was for the best because he was still not at a hundred after his flight.

The little bit of activity to get his blood flowing faster and to maintain muscle activity was the best for helping his exhaustion and he was sure he would feel better tomorrow.

The national team fully training on the field was carefully recorded by the media team who were already planning what captions they would use when posting the videos.