Greatest Of All Legends

Chapter 57  The Days That Rolled By... III

**7th February 2020**

Training continued today as well with everyone training harder than ever because of the high-profile match coming up the next day.

The Porto side would be welcoming their biggest rival team, Benfica to the Estadio do Dragao in a match that promised to be full of high amounts of tension but full of excitement all the less.

Yet the tension was lost on Jason as he was currently dealing with his emotions that threatened to spill over after the head manager had thrown him back to the second team's side for the internal scrimmage matches.

'Was this man playing with his emotions?' he wondered while doing his best to keep his emotions in check.

Why add him to the first team and give him hope if he was only going to throw him back despite Jason not doing anything wrong and performing at a whole new level after the promotion?

He couldn't understand the manager's decision and despite it being a mere change in training arrangements, Jason was having a hard time keeping his emotions in check despite having made a commitment to doing just that a few days earlier.

Because of this, he ended up not performing up to par during his first minutes on the pitch in the internal scrimmage and this had earned him 60 split squats and he had come off the pitch due to squad rotation five minutes after.

Being taken off the pitch had given him a few minutes to think and calm his raging emotions enough to remember his previous decision to take every decision made by the manager in stride while performing at a high enough level that would not give the manager any other choice than to include him in his plans.

After getting a few minutes to calm himself, Jason was brought back onto the pitch with the next squad rotation and he proceeded to rip the first team's defense in his enthusiasm and managed to serve the forwards two assists within the five minutes that his team was on the attack.

At the end of the internal scrimmage session, Jason had racked up two goals and five assists against the first team.

On the sidelines, head manager Sergio Conceicao looked at his players who were now doing individual training after finishing the winger-specific training session that he had been having them focus on over the past two weeks.

He was trying to decide the players who he would be adding to the line-up for the match against their rivals the coming day and his eyes involuntarily fell on the newest addition to their team.

The kid had been adjusting to the level of the first team players at an alarming rate and Sergio knew that it would soon be time for his name to start popping up in his mind when he was deciding matchday line-ups but he still thought it was too early.

It was for this reason that he had vetoed his assistant's decision to add him to the first team in the internal scrimmage training session.

Sergio Conceicao wanted Jason to adjust to the level of the first team and the best way to do this was by having him play against them and not along with them.

Either of those choices would still end up having the same result, but having him play against them would have him adjust at a much quicker rate, hence he had sent him back to the second team which was obviously the much weaker side and it seemed like his decision was having the required effect.

Sergio Conceicao thought Jason still needed more time to adjust, but Jason's performances were saying otherwise and it was already time to start considering adding him to the line-up as he was already performing at the level where it shouldn't cause any harm to the team to have him debut.

Unfortunately due to the high stakes in the coming games, Sergio Conceicao could not bring himself to add Jason to the line-up immediately.

There was the Benfica game which held a lot of importance to the fans and the management and coming immediately after that was the second leg of the Taca de Portugal against Academico de Viseu which needed to be won at all costs because the team already lost one domestic cup this season.

After those two matches were matches against Vitoria de Guimares, a team that almost always made it into the top seven in the Primera Liga every season, and the first leg of the Europa League round of 32 against Bayer Leverkusen.

He needed to think a lot about whether he should add Jason to the line-up immediately, but now that he was thinking hard about it, there shouldn't be a problem featuring Jason in one of those matches as a substitute and letting him experience a few minutes of the game.

Maybe not in the big matches like the one against Benfica or Bayer Leverkusen, but against weaker teams like Academico Viseu or Vitoria de Guimares, he concluded.

**8th February 2020**

It was match day at Estadio do Dragao and the dragons welcomed the eagles for a clash that would send the fans of either side home with bragging rights for a few months at least.

Jason arrived at the stadium to watch the game after a fulfilling day at the training grounds as he was not a part of the matchday line-up. Not hearing his name when the line-up for the match was called earlier in the day during the morning training session was not surprising and he had been half expecting it, but he still could not help but hope that the coach had finally changed his mind, yet it seemed like he had been hoping for too much. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

It was still the same and his name was still skimmed over despite how much effort he had put into training so it was inevitable that he would feel a bit down.

He had even been tempted in a burst of childish anger to not bother coming to the stadium to watch the game, but he had ended up thinking that doing that would be quite childish so he had ended up coming anyway.

'This match better not be a waste of my damn time,' he could not help thinking, his emotions tethering on the vengeful side after not being picked for the match day squad.