The coach's revenge

"You're sure you're alright?" Esmeralda asked me while I laid down on the bench.

"I'm fine, I just need to rest." The pain in my ribs didn't stop but what hurt me the most was that I wasn't able to play the rest of the game.

I couldn't help but look down at the ground while thinking of how stupid that move might've been. 'Maybe there was a better alternative?' I couldn't help but regret my decision. I just hope my injury isn't too bad.

"Don't look so down Jude. You did a perfect job, scoring a goal in the first 20 minutes is perfect for us. Thanks to you we can forget about our previous tactic, it's time to give them a taste of their own medicine." Evans said with a wicked smile.

It was my first time seeing him have such a sadistic expression, ever since the tournament started I've grown way closer to him and he almost treated me like the vice-captain of the team, I always got to know everything that was going on in the team and all our future plans in advance.

After taking a quick look at our current team and tactic I could already tell what he was planning to do, I had a hard time holding back my laugh after seeing how petty our coach can be.

I didn't notice earlier because I was too focused on my own injury but the guy who got subbed in my place was yet another of our best defenders, the coach changed our tactic into a 5-4-1 and tasked everyone to just focus on the defense and on keeping the possession on our side.

Kevin was the only one left in the offence and I'm pretty sure he's nothing but a bait they keep to make sure they don't advance too much, he's being used as a safety measure. He's the fastest one in our team and if they make the mistake of advancing their defense too much he can easily take them by surprise and go score on his own.

Especially with Ricardo by his side, his long passes are extremely dangerous coupled with Kevin's speed. Though this time Ricardo chose to follow the coach's instructions and always stayed in the defense.

I even started feeling bad for our opponents at some point, for the whole first half, as much as they attacked and tried everything they couldn't, they only managed to shoot once and it wasn't even on target.

The pressure our team was putting on them was crazy, especially since they're not used to being in such a situation, their whole line up is used to playing defensively and not taking too much risk.

"Since when do you like watching others play?" Esmeralda asked me out of curiosity, I usually don't like being on the bench so I don't focus much on the games when that happens. I also don't watch the other team's games to analyze them so she didn't expect me to actually pay so much attention to a game.

"If I have to be honest, that's probably one of the most satisfying games I've ever seen." I replied with a big smile which confused her even more.

In the second half most of the crowd was starting to get annoyed, the opponents started to become more and more desperate and made way more mistakes.

Many of those mistakes created opportunities for us to go on the offensive but even with those many great opportunities our team only focused on making fake runs and then passing the ball back to our side of the field.

It was safe to say that we were playing with them for the whole game, everything was done in order to waste as much time as possible.

It was hilarious to get to witness this team get a taste of their own medicine and our coach was clearly the happiest one about this, I can understand him since this is exactly how they kicked us out of the tournament last year.

As much as they struggled it only made it more and more impossible for them to make a comeback, their 2 star players were useless in such a situation, even if they were to get close to the goal they'd end up getting fouled as per the coach's instructions.

Near the end of the game, Arnold actually ended up getting a red card and joined me on the bench. For the last 10 minutes of the game, I just kept laughing at the game alongside him while mocking the other team and sometimes even our own players for fun.

Talking to him was always fun, we weren't friends or anything of the sort but we still got along extremely well, we were both very straightforward and unhinged so that's probably what bought us together. It's also thanks to him that I ended up joining the A team. He's a pretty crazy dude.

He was the only person I knew who could be so happy after getting a red card, I think he might've even done it on purpose. He could've easily just stole the ball from his opponent but instead, he hit him with a tackle that you would rarely ever find in an MMA fight. I was glad that me and him were on the same side.

Soon enough the game came to an end, the score didn't move at all throughout the whole game, it was over on a 1-0 score which meant yet another win for our side. With that, we finally got our tickets for the Semi-finals.

I originally planned to train as hard as I could for the semi-finals, but because of my injury, I was tasked to not come to the trainings and instead focus solely on recovering, so that's what I did.

The doctor told me that my ribs were just bruised and a little damaged but that in around 4 to 6 weeks I should be fully recovered so I didn't worry too much about it but I knew that if I didn't listen to them and kept training I might make my injury become way worse.

That also meant that for the rest of the tournament, I would have to play while being injured which isn't advised by the medical team, they all told me to stay on the bench for the rest of the tournament to make sure I recover as soon as possible.

Luckily, the coach was still thinking of making me play, the further I go in this tournament the better the rewards I will gain in the end so I absolutely wanted to win it. Everyone knew that without me on the team our offence become way weaker so they shared the coach's opinion.

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*1 week time skip*

"Is your injury any better?" Ricardo checked up on me with a worried look.

"Yeah don't worry, I'm pretty sure I will be able to continue playing until the final." I replied with a smile. In this week I didn't train much but I gained back some of my confidence since my body didn't hurt as much as it used to.

"I'm happy to see you back to normal, but trust me our next opponents aren't a team we can take lightly. They're nothing short of monsters, I checked some of their games alongside the coach and we both think that we have under 10% chances of winning." He said while frowning for the first time.

"Are you serious? They're that good? I knew that they were one of the favorites for this tournament but why would our chances be so low? We aren't weak either." It was my first time seeing him being so pessimistic and I couldn't help but dislike it.

"I'm more than serious, saying that we have a chance at all is already pretty optimistic, not only do they have an incredible line up and some of the best players I know, but this year they even got a monstrous striker from a foreign country." He said in a serious tone.

"What? Why would a U15 team get a foreign player to join them? Isn't that something they only do later on?" I was kinda confused about whether what he said was true or not.

"He's supposed to join their youth team actually, he even played some games with them and joined in their trainings, but since he's still 15 and turns 16 two weeks after the end of the tournament they still allowed him to play in this tournament, from what I understood he was tasked to win this tournament in order to officially join the youth team." He said with his head lowered.

"Well, let's not worry about it too much, when we're together I'm sure that we can even take care of some foreign genius hahaha." I laughed while patting his back.