Greatest Of All Legends - Chapter 271: Recovery Ends
Chapter 271: Recovery Ends
The match ended with a scoreline of Porto 2 – 3 Boavista.
Porto had lost.
Their last-minute goal could only serve as a consolation for them and helped to reduce the goal difference lost from their loss.
It did nothing to mitigate the loss and Porto was left with nothing but a minimized loss.
The Porto players and fans were disheartened, but they soon perked up as it was still early in the season and they could still recover from this loss.
All they needed to do was to keep winning and avoid situations like this one from happening often.
It was almost impossible to go undefeated throughout the season so it was very likely that this wasn’t the last loss that the Porto team would experience in the season, but they had to make sure that the wins they had more than covered for their losses.
That was the only way to avoid losing the title of champions.
Luckily, Porto was a team that knew how to do just that so the minds of the fans remained at ease.
The results of the match had seen Porto drop to the 6th position on the league table, but the players quickly put that behind them as the days of the international break arrived.
Players like Luis Diaz, Zaidu Sanusi, Pepe, and some others who received international calls ups left to join their national teams while the rest of the players were hard at training every day at the CTFD Portogaia.
The head manager and club staff were also not idle as it was still the transfer season.
On the 5th of October, Danilo Perreira finalized a loan deal with the French hegemon, Paris Saint-Germain.
It was a loan deal with an option to buy at the end of the season and though Sergio Conceicao was a bit sad to see Danilo go, Danilo himself had pushed for the deal and wanted to move to greener pastures… Or so he thought.
In the end, Danilo Perreira had left the Porto squad and would be heading straight to Paris after the International break as he could not leave yet due to being part of the Portuguese national squad.
With that Porto’s already thinning midfield became thinner and to counter that Sergio Conceicao pushed forward his plans to loan a few players he had eyes on earlier.
A transfer deal was currently impossible as he only needed the players to fill in should a situation require so.
One of the players Sergio Conceicao had his eye on was Felipe Anderson who played as a winger who played for the English team, West Ham.
Due to squad issues, Felipe Anderson had not been involved in the West Ham starting lineup for a while so he would be open to the deal, the Porto head manager hopes.
He knew that despite currently being ousted from the starting lineup, Felipe Anderson’s quality couldn’t be denied so he wished the deal would go through and luckily it did.
Felipe Anderson was open to the loan deal as he did not wish to permanently leave West Ham yet, but also desired more playing time.
Perhaps he hoped that if he performed well enough with Porto, he would be more involved in the West Ham manager’s plans in the future.
Either way, everything worked out for both sides and on the 6th of October, 2020, Felipe Anderson joined Porto on a season-long loan deal.
Apart from Felipe Anderson, Sergio Conceicao had also gone ahead to loan a midfielder, Marko Griujic from Liverpool, and a defender, Malang Sarr from Chelsea.
The loan deals were completed consecutively on the same day and the players quickly joined the Porto squad in training.
After transfers were completed, the new players were quickly incorporated into the team and joined the Porto team that were training extra hard to make up for their loss in the last match.
The match they would be having after the international break was against Sporting CP so the Porto team had a lot to do if they wanted to ensure a victory against such an opponent, especially when they were coming from a loss in their last game against Maritimo.
The days moved by swiftly and the day that all Porto fans as well as quite a few other football fans had been anticipating impatiently finally arrived.
On the 13th of October, Jason finally resumed training with the Porto team.
The news made waves in the media and the many Porto fans took off to social media to announce the return of the ‘Rose Dragon’ to the squad of the dragons.
Meanwhile, Jason did not care about the media storm that was brewing because he had returned to training, but instead was just happy to be completely recovered and could join the team training sessions again.
He had arrived at the training grounds first and had a talk with Sergio Conceicao who welcomed him back to the team and told him to take it easy with his training as neither of them hoped for Jason to be injured again.
After easing Jason’s mind with a promise to include him in the team’s line-up soon, he sent Jason to the field to join the remaining team members.
Quite a few members of the team weren’t at the training ground due to having received international calls ups, but Jason didn’t mind and joined the players who were around.
As Jason joined the players who were already training, he received welcomes from his teammates.
Not forgetting to personally introduce himself to the new members of the team, he answered his teammates with a few witty comments and soon threw himself back into training just like he usually did before his injury.
A few teammates, especially the new members were surprised by how hard Jason was training when he just came back from an injury, and quite a few trainers tried to tell him to reduce the intensity at which he was training but after responding like he had heard them, he went on to train just as hard or even harder than he was already doing.
A few trainers had wry smiles on their face as they told the trainers trying to tell Jason to reduce his intensity, that this was how Jason normally was and he wouldn’t listen if they tried to make him slow down his training.
A few members of the team, especially the new guys were seemingly motivated by Jason began to train harder and faster, but before long, they were soon wheezing and struggling for breath.