Reincarnated As A Footballer - 11 The First Week Scrimmage

After both the men left, the coaches who apparently told to wait outside came in and gave each player a number. As Vinod was an attacker, he was A-13. Similarly, if one was a defender then his number would D-(number), if he was a goalkeeper then G-(number) and for a midfielder, it would be M-(number). After they were sorted, the U-18 head coach Tommy Berntsen brought up many boxes and placed it at the middle of the football ground. Then he took a mike and started announcing teams. It was based on one’s age group. The process was:- Taking out a formation from the first box and picking up players from the position boxes as per the formation required. Vinod’s name was called in the U-14 Team Number 3. It was a 4-3-3 basic formation and luckily for him, all of his dormmates were in the same team. As soon as the players were sorted out into teams, they were asked to get assembled in a specific place for team bonding. Then they were told by the coaches that their first test would on the next Saturday where they will be playing against another team and will be judged accordingly to their performance in that match. They were also told that the only players they could talk to in their age group were their teammates only and if they were caught talking to others, they will be sent out and in order to implement this, there were schedules now for players on their training sessions and the dorms were temporarily moved to a huge hall which comprised of everything belonging to these eleven players. Then they were shown their temporary dormitory and given the schedule for the next week, and .after that the coach left.

As soon as he left, all the players started introducing themselves. Luckily for Vinod, there were two people who were able to speak English, another attacker and a defender. The attacker was a short 13-year-old boy from Nigeria named Chidera Ejuke and even he had a translator with him. He was luckily scouted when he was playing for the youth team of a Nigerian Club named Gombe United. The defender, Karl Johansen was a Norwegian through and through with a daunting height of 163 cm. He knew English because his parents made him to after seeing him play good football at a very young age saying that it would be useful in the future.

So another eventful week passed by and Vinod was surprised by the measures the club was taking in blocking them contacting other U-14 players. Even during his practice, he would only see U-12, U-16 or U-18 players in the adjacent fields. So by Saturday, they had somewhat of an idea what each other were capable of. On Friday, they were shown their positions. Vinod was the Left Winger, Chidera was the Attacker/Striker, Aksel was the Central Midfielder, and the duo of Karl and William were the Central Defenders. And by this time, his stamina increased by 1. And so the eventual day came. They were expecting another team of the U-14 division, but what greeted them gave them yet another shock. They were about to play the Sao Paulo U-14 team.

As soon as Martin Andressen became the manager, he immediately asked the club to form mutually beneficial partnerships with other global clubs. By now they had ties with Sao Paulo FC from Brazil,River Plate FC from Argentina, Olympique Lyon FC from France and recently they were able to form ties with the kings of youth football AFC Ajax from the Netherlands. Thus the club had invited the other clubs over to Oslo for a joint youth training camp starting from 14th of February for five days. The club said the players who were going to take part in the training camp would be exempt from attending classes during the period of the camp but will have to take additional classes on the next weekend.

The players were excited and a bit nervous facing against the Sao Paulo youth because firstly they were from Brazil, a nation famous for its football after producing gems like Pele, Kaka, Ronaldo, Garrincha, Zico, Socrates and of course the recent sensation of Neymar. Secondly, Sao Paulo had one of the world’s best youth academies. They had their match in the club’s stadium, the Ullevaal Stadium since all the other training fields were conducting matches simultaneously. The Ullevaal Stadium with the capacity of 28,000 was jointly used by Vålerenga FC and the Norwegian National Football team.

When both the teams arrived at the stadium, the coach informed them that they were going to be recorded both by Sao Paulo and Vålerenga FC officials and the recorded video then would be used for evaluating their performance this next month and that he was going to announce something in the middle of the match. After warming up and getting ready, the match started with Vålerenga U-14-III kicking off.

Chidera started things off by passing the ball to Vinod and started running towards the opponents’ goal. Vinod after receiving the pass looked at the pitch only to notice that the Sao Paulo players were quick to man mark him. So he simply passed the ball back to the LM who was standing behind him. The LM in order to prove his worth started sprinting towards the opponent’s goal only to be blocked by a Sao Paulo striker. The striker then passed the ball off to the defender. For the next ten minutes or so, the Sao Paulo players denied giving the ball to their opponents and thereby keeping complete possession. This made the Vålerenga players increasingly agitated and thus nearly everyone started rushing towards the Sao Paulo team. As soon as the SPFC’s (Sao Paulo FC) players saw this, they simply started passing it back to their defenders. The defenders kept it with them and passed the ball by nutmegging the opposing player and as soon as an opportunity came by, the defender passed it on to a midfielder who then gave it to their main striker. After this, the man marking of Sao Paulo’s players had stopped. The striker then simply blazed through the pitch and kicked the ball only for it to be stopped by Ivan. As the VFC players then regrouped, Ivan passed the ball to Karl, who immediately gave a high lob to Vinod.

Vinod then started dribbling towards the opposing side when a lanky defender from the opposing side came to snatch it back from him. He simply passed it to Chidera who passed it back to him. Vinod then slowed down the play and passed it back and forth with Chidera, and Aksel who by now with many others came to the front of the field. As he saw his lanky opposition falter a bit, he simply dribbled pass him and by now he came to the left of the SPFC’s penalty box. So he tried giving a cross only to be fouled by the opposing side’s midfielder. The free kick was taken by Vinod who attempted to take advantage of this set piece. So he curled the ball high towards Karl who had already begun jumping only to see that Karl was outmatched completely in a physical battle the opposing team’s defender. Time trickled down slowly and the first half had come to an end. The first half was nothing but Paulo U-14dominating the play so much and if not for Ivan, it would have had been nearly a 20 goal difference in the first half itself. But on the plus side, some of Vålerenga’s attacks went through thanks to the contribution of Vinod starting up the play by blowing past the opposition defence thanks to an excellent set of dribbling, ball control, and agility.

As this was a test for the Vålerenga FC’s U-14 team, the coach told them that he would not help them anything with strategy at all for this match and they were on their own. After hearing this, the already sour mood turned even more. Then all the players huddled up and discussed what they saw on how to handle the opposition with Karl translating from Norwegian to English to Norwegian.

Then the second half started. As soon as it started, the attacking midfielder of the opposition named Lizziero immediately stuck onto Vinod. It was then Vinod realized that he was completely outclassed by him. May it be in physical or technical aspects, Lizziero suppressed Vinod to dire straits. With the cog to Vålerenga’s attack gone, they lost possession as soon as they got it. Things started getting even worse when the attackers of Sao Paulo started making some brilliant shots. After half an hour into the second half, the SPFC U-14s were leading by a margin of five goals and they literally started toying with the home players. It was then that the coach along with two translators (One in English and other in Spanish) came to the pitch with a megaphone in their hands, stopped the game for some moment and gave an announcement which was subsequently translated

“The team you are facing are the second string or commonly known as the backup squad of the Sao Paulo U-14s. And to be specific, we asked them to play with a handicap. You see they are playing with a reverse system.” after hearing this the entire Vålerenga squad looked at the coach with shell shocked silence. Seeing that no response came from them he/they continued

“To put it in simple words, the attackers were playing defence, the offensive midfielders were playing in the defensive midfield and vice versa. So apart from the Goalkeeper, everyone was playing in a completely new position to them. Since we were a newly originated program, we did not want them to have a massive advantage over you.” after that, he turned to the Sao Paulo players and said

“Thank you for bearing with us and complying to this request but for the next fifteen minutes, the last fifteen minutes in the match, please play against us in your normal positions to the best of your abilities. Well, this was the announcement, so thank you and please restart the game from where you left off.”