Chapter 520: The Day

A couple of hours passed and the last training session before the game against Dynamo FC was finally here.

Norman didn't tell them anything about their lineup, formation, and tactics in their last training session so it was obvious that he was going to do it in this one.

But before that, the players had quite the long passing drill waiting for them. He added a couple of things to make it a bit fun but after repeating the same scenario over ten times, most of them got tired of it just like last time.

Norman noticed this and moved them to the other important drills that they had to take care of for the rest of the day.

After over two hours of training, the training session finally came to an end and now it was time to see what the coach had planned for the game.

Now that the training session for the day was over, the players were all sitting in the locker room with Norman standing over them.

He glanced through the players about two times before clearing his throat.

"Alright, listen up, after what happened against Dynamo on the two occasions that we've faced them this season, it's obvious that if we want to beat them we'll have to switch things up a bit and that's what we're going to be doing in this game." He articulated.

"To start things off, we will be going into the game with the four-four-two formation, I say it's the four-four-two formation but the formation is more like four-one-two-one-two. That's right, we'll be playing with a pivot, two central midfielders, and an attacking midfielder."

'I hope so.'

"Now that you know what formation we'll be using in the game, let's move over to the starting lineup. To kick things off, Fred and Merino will be starting in the striking positions and supporting them as our attacking midfielder will be Mateo."

Dave quickly turned his gaze to Mateo at the moment to see that the winger had his right hand on his chin but other than that, he had no reaction to that. Attacking midfield was one of the positions he could handle outside the left wing so there was no problem.

"Our central midfielders will be Ferran and Minino and for our defensive midfielder, Martinez will be filling in that role."

'Yeah, I understand what you're saying, Frankie shines when he's brought in as a last resort.'

The last part was the defense and it was pretty much the same with Norman starting on the right wing and Roland on the left. The center backs were Adolf and Aima, obviously.

That was the starting lineup and now that it was known to the players, the coach went on to start explaining how he wanted them to approach the game.

"I've noticed that that crafty coach of theirs has been relying a lot on counterattacks to win games recently so we'll have to be careful on our side. I don't want any dull movements when we're on the attack so we'll have to settle for setting offside traps for them.

The only way to beat them is to press them as hard as we can from the get-go, if we go easy on them and try to break through slowly then things are going to be difficult.

"That's why I've adopted this offensive formation that doesn't really look all that offensive. Whenever someone like, let's say Martinez is on the move with the ball, I want the two central midfielders to move forward and spread out down the flanks to create the wingers they thought we didn't have.

"During this moment, I want you, Merino to draw back and leave Fred in the box, if there's a clearance or a chance for them to clear the ball, you can get to the ball and if you fail to get to it, I'm sure Mateo will be able to get to it and you can either go for goal from there or play someone who is in a good position through."

'After what happened in our last two games, I expected this much.'

"Remember, smart long passes to break their lines is the theme for this match and if you think you can try from distance then go ahead and do it, don't be afraid to test your limits, we're going into this game to win it."

'Oh, so that's why most of today's passing drill was long passes.'

This was just the first part of what Norman had planned for the game, he still had a few more things to talk about especially how they were going to handle their threats and the players just had to listen carefully.

_________ ________

A couple of hours passed and the day was finally here, the day the Dynamo FC squad were going to visit the Wondanimo stadium for the game to decide who was going to be moving on to the Semifinals of the Bilbeth Super Cup.

Dave got up that morning to find out that his wife was not with him in bed but that was nothing to be worried about, she had been getting up before him recently so it was sort of becoming a normal thing now.

The goalkeeper got up from the bed and stretched his body a bit before making his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face before returning to the room to change into his sports outfit and running boots.

'When have I not been lively in the morning? I'm a bit excited though, if that's what you're talking about.'

He made his way out of the room at that moment, and just as he got to the stairs, he stopped to look down.

"Let's do this baby!" He screamed before quickly making his way downstairs.

Emma had to make her way out of the kitchen because of that and now she had her gaze on him.

"Looks like someone's excited this morning." She smiled.

"You bet, today's the day we beat Dynamo FC after all, I hope."