Chapter 531: Set Piece Duty Reshuffle I
“Bro, who do you think will win between Inter and AC?” Mckennie asked Cuadrado as they walked through the corridors of the Uventus stadium.
“It’s hard to put a finger on that one, though. Inter has been playing well, and they’re still top of the table, but that AC Milan is not so easy to beat, especially with that Rafael Leao guy who’s playing for them,”
“He has an annoying way of turning up in completely unexpected situations. Kinda like Jason here,” Cuadrado said, ruffling his hand through Jason’s hair.
“What the hell, man,” Jason complained immediately.
He had been trying to gather the hair together so he could tie it up, and Cuadrado decided to casually set him back a few seconds by ruffling his hair.
Cuadrado didn’t feel any remorse about what he had just done though, and laughed heartily at Jason. Mckennie and a few other players joined him in laughter as they kept walking.
The Uventus players were heading out to the field for a pre-match warm-up before their game against Spezia, which would be held at their own stadium.
Especially since the team above them, Inter Milan, was in a top-tier match-up.
If there was any likely time for Inter Milan to drop points, it was today, and the Uventus team planned to capitalize on that if it ever happened.
The match was still about an hour away though.
The players continued walking forward, conversing with another in low and loud tones depending on the conversation and they were soon at the entrance to the tunnel.
Right as they stepped out of the tunnel and were hit by the stadium lights, they were also hit by the slowly rising noise in the stadium.
The stadium was already slowly filling up with fans waiting for the game to begin, and quite a few of those fans were seated near the tunnels.
As the players showed up at the entrance of the tunnel, the fans’ attention immediately shot in their direction. Some shouted the players’ names, while others reached out for a handshake or an autograph.
Unsurprisingly, most of the fans were calling for Ronaldo’s attention, but a new development was that Jason was the second most popular name among the fans, and a great deal of those voices sounded feminine.
Jason didn’t know what caused the sudden increase, as no one told him anything.
He had been off social media for a little while, as he had been more focused on training the last few days, but he still responded to the fans as best as he could.
He gave a few handshakes, signed five autographs, and waved and blew kisses to the fans who were far away.
Of course, only the far-away female fans received flying kisses.
All the male fans were entitled to were waves and salutes.
After quickly attending to the fans, the players quickly went to their side of the field to begin warming up for the game.
The manager had already told them the line-up for the game and discussed most of the game’s tactical set-up, so the players did a bit of practice with one another for what they planned for in the game.
“Hey, let me take some set pieces in this game,” Jason suddenly asked when Ronaldo and Cuadrado were discussing the setpieces for the game.
Normally, Cuadrado was in charge of the left corner and long free-kicks, while Ronaldo was in charge of penalties and short free-kicks.
Danilo, Alex Sandro, and Dybala sometimes took part in the set piece-taking whenever they were on the pitch, but these two were the main guys.
“Free kicks or corner kicks?” Cuadrado asked Jason, not minding too much as he knew Jason had good accuracy and was good enough to take it.
“Only kids choose; I want ’em both,” Jason snickered.
“I don’t know if you know, but nineteen is still a kid,” Ronaldo countered and laughed.
“Eighteen is adulthood age; I can drive and drink a beer if I want,” Jason countered, trying to get a word back in.
“Nineteen still has ‘teen’ in it. It’s all an illusion,” Cuadrado backed up Ronaldo and laughed at Jason as well.
“Eighteen is just the age for adulthood because the government of all those countries needed kids to fight in wars back then. It used to be 21,” Mckennie, who was nearby, chimed in.
“That’s a weird take, but okay… a bit morbid though,”
“Anyway, I want to take some corner kicks,” Jason replied.
“And a short free-kick,” he continued, turning to Ronaldo, snarkily rubbing his hands.
“I can do corner kicks, you’ll only get three, though, and if you cross sh*t, then that’s the end of it,” Cuadrado said, nodding as he spoke.
“Three’s okay. I’m not after corner-kicking duty,” Jason laughed.
He only felt like taking a few set pieces on the pitch since it had been a while since he had taken set pieces anywhere apart from training.
The only reason he was able to take set-pieces in Oporto was that they had lost Telles, who was the major set-piece taker, and Oliveira wasn’t playing all that often thanks to the squad arrangement.
Normally, it would be difficult for someone like him even to get any chances on a set piece.
“Ororo?” Jason asked, turning to Ronaldo for permission to take short free kicks.
“One… you get one chance to take a free-kick every game from now on,” Ronaldo said, his words surprising everyone who heard.
Everyone knew that as long as Ronaldo was on the pitch, he would take all the short-distance free-kicks, even in the national team, so no one expected to hear Ronaldo give him a chance in every game.
One chance per game didn’t seem to be much, but to someone like Ronaldo, it was like he had willingly taken a step back and allowed Jason to be a co-free kicktaker on the team.
It was not something anyone expected to happen.
“You’ll need to do it again and again if you want to get good at it, and it seems like you already have talent in this direction, so, for now, one chance per game,”
“if you score a free-kick, you can take another one in the same game, and if you score three free kicks in total, I’ll increase the chances to two times per game,” Ronaldo continued speaking, totally oblivious to what everyone was thinking as their eyes continually widened with every word that came out of his mouth.