Chapter 450: Game Day!
The game day finally arrived. It was a sunny noon, where the sun shone straight above everyone’s head in the pitch of the camp. Unlike in the last game, today would be a closed game, where no spectators were allowed to come and see the game. Still, that didn’t dismiss the tension around, as the main players for the national team were quite nervous today.
It wasn’t like they had never played a big game before. No, most of them were talented players from big teams, so they were not strangers to high-level games like this. Hell, they could even say that today was far from being high-level, since for the opponent, this was going to be an ordinary friendly match.
Still, the thought of playing badly and burying their own hope in this team didn’t bode well in so many young minds here. It couldn’t be helped; the image of the main players getting cooked by the coach after the last game still lingered inside their heads, and they didn’t want to become the next victim here.
"Damn, Higo-san, you must have the nerve of steel, huh? Even I feel like the atmosphere here is going to wreck my head, you know?" Mamoru smiled wanly as he ran next to Higo during the warming-up session. Even he, himself, who was hailed as a genius, still felt some fear in this situation.
The others also nodded secretly, glancing at Higo enviously.
"Ha! We Hakodate People don’t really know what nervousness is! I mean, look at Teme! If you don’t know better, you would think he is about to go to a concert!" Higo suppressed a laugh as he pointed at Makino, who was warming up while his head bobbed up and down with the rhythm of the music from his earphones.
"Tch! You country bumpkins don’t know the weight of the world... How fortunate..." Kyosuke Tagawa, Makino’s roommate, sneered as he said that. However, there was no heat in it, more like a teasing banter. At this point, it would be more embarrassing to mistake Hakodate as a ’country’ area, as it was one of the most famous cities in Hokkaido besides Sapporo and Asahikawa.
"Everyone, go back! The opponent has arrived!" Suddenly, a voice snapped their conversation. It was Sakura Aizawa, the one who supervised the warmup session, who called them up.
"Sure, Sakura-chan!" The boys shouted back, walking into the locker room as quickly as possible.
It didn’t take long, only fifteen minutes later, and both teams were finally ready for the game. The national team came with the white and black jersey, their training jersey, while Jubilo Iwata was with their proudest light blue one. Just as Kumiko said, Higo noticed that the opponent only had one foreign player on their team.
’So, that is Adailton, huh? That man is going to be a problem for us.’ He took a note secretly.
Not only him, but Makino was also doing the same. In his mind, he had already simulated a lot of things, combining his experience as a defender with the data sent by Kumiko yesterday.
’His signature move is to wait until a full back penetrates and a striker goes wide together to force the team’s defensive line to drop before he takes advantage of that space. He will never go to the middle unnecessarily, but that doesn’t mean he avoids physical collision. If he is running toward me, I cannot think of how to stop him. I have to think of delay, make sure he doesn’t have any angle to take a shot. Then, Chibi will surely do the rest of the job properly on the back.’
Makino was quite confident, since this was in line with the method that Hakodate Nishi always used. Just shut down all the easy paths, then the more impossible ones will be the goalkeeper’s task. That was the best part of having a good one protecting the back line.
Soon enough, both captains met at the center line for the coin toss. Today, the captain’s role was placed in Hinata Kida’s hands. He was a right back, pretty much low-key but with a strong discipline sense in defense. It was just a pity that his competitor on that side, Sugawara, was a more experienced player, so that he only had a chance to play today.
After a small meeting with the referee, the man finally went back with the team, saying shortly, "We are going first."
If it were Hakodate Nishi, both Makino and Higo would be ecstatic. After all, they had the infamous Blitzkrieg attack that could make the opponent tremble when they heard about it from afar.
Unfortunately, the national team had none of that here, so it just followed the conventional route, playing slow for the tempo at the beginning of the game.
Soon, Higo found himself standing in between the posts once again. This time, though, there was a mix of a familiar and strange thing he felt inside. The familiar one was him guarding the team’s goal against a real opponent once again, but the strange feeling came from the fact that no supporters sat behind the goal to commentate every little move he made.
This reminded him of the first time he played for Hakodate Nishi, where the only sound he could hear was the shout coming from players inside the pitch, and that was one hell of a memory-lane trip.
’Yeah, I cannot believe it has been one year since that time back home... Time sure passes by so quickly, huh?’ He sighed in melancholy.
Meanwhile, on the center line, both Kyosuke Tagawa and Koki Saito, a striker from Yokohama FC U-21, were also ready for the kickoff. Both had their hands on their hips, looking at the referee carefully for the whistle.
The referee himself was also checking with his team, trying to make sure that everything was okay. Both teams were ready, and the man had also set the time on his watch to start. Then, without hesitation...
FWEEE!
The referee blew the whistle, starting the second friendly match for the national team camp in Chiba.
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