Two days later and the players were back in training, they had all seen the round of sixteen draws and some of them had interesting things to say about it.
"They're obviously trying to put us out of the competition!" Minino remonstrated before he sent the ball beside him flying toward the goalpost on the other side of the pitch.
He wasn't trying to do anything with it, but the ball ended up hitting the crossbar before falling into the goalpost.
"I don't think that's the case, Minino," Merino remarked.
"Yeah, I don't understand why they'll have anything against us, this is our first time in the tournament anyway," Roland added.
"Both of you are just so sad," Minino said in detest before slowly walking past both of them to pick up the ball behind them.
"I seriously don't understand what all the ruckus is all about," Martinez pronounced as he closed up on the three.
"Huh?" Roland muttered with a confused expression on his face. "We're going to be facing a team that beat Dynamo Kyiv fourteen goals to one."
"Yeah, and so what? We're not Dynamo Kyiv are we?" He established before crossing his arms.
"But what? This was the way you guys reacted when the group stage draws came out and just look at what we did to that group." The midfielder pointed out. "They don't really deserve these reactions from you guys, if they were so strong then they should have continued through to the next stage of the Europa League and not drop down to the Conference League."
"You have a very good point, Martinez." Minino sniffled before making his way to him with the ball in his hand. "But you can't deny that beating a team with a combined score of fourteen goals to one is a bit scary."
"Wow, and I thought nothing scared you," Martinez remarked as his voice immediately took on a mocking tone.
"Hey, I wasn't talking about me." Minino retorted with a little stutter.
"I was talking about the rest of the squad, it may affect the way they go into the match." He stated.
"Well, it's okay to have some thoughts about an opponent but thinking too much about is bad, they're beatable just like every other team and we are going to beat them, the squad is going to be fine, Mateo doesn't look that bothered."
As soon as he added that last part, they turned their gaze to the side where Mateo could be seen joggling the ball with his head.
"Dave told me how he was a bit worried about the match but he doesn't seem to be thinking about it too much either."
Well, he wasn't wrong because while almost everyone was using the break period to rest and talk, he was attempting something with Alexander who was standing in front of the goalpost on the other side of the pitch while he was standing in front of the goalpost on his side.
"Are you ready?!" He yelled before raising his hand.
"Yes!" Alexander yelled back before raising his hand.
"Okay, here goes nothing." He grunted before slowly taking three steps backward.
After that, he quickly closed up on the ball and sent it flying toward the goalpost with a thunderous shot.
"Oh, boy," Alexander muttered as soon as the ball started coming his way.
The ball was heading toward the top right-hand corner, and although he was in a good enough position to save it, he wasn't able to hit it out completely as the ball ended up sliding past his glove and hit the post before falling into the goalpost.
"I wasn't expecting that to go in," Dave muttered before he slowly began to make his way to the other side.
Alexander would have already gotten up by the time he got to him but he was still sitting on the floor with his head hanging low.
"Hey, what happened?" Dave asked before bending toward him with both of his hands on his knees.
"I almost got it but then it sort of slipped off, that was supposed to be an easy save, I saw where it was going before it got close enough."
"Yeah, I get that feeling but it's okay, you're doing way better than I was doing at your age, I couldn't even break into the first team at seventeen years of age so you should know that you have the makings of a great goalkeeper." Dave empathized before slowly turning his gaze to the left.
"Yeah, but that was because the team didn't have a backup goalkeeper and I was the only one available."
"I wasn't done," Dave said before slowly turning his gaze back to him. "Your performance against Dynamo FC reveals that you'll be a great goalkeeper."
"Are you serious? We were going to lose that game because I let two goals in, you had to come in and save the day."
"To be fair, there was nothing you could do to stop those goals, I believe I would have been able to save that first one but that second one, those goals came from the team's mistakes, you did your job quite well in that match."
"You're right but I could have done a bit more like how you came in and scored that equalizer." He uttered with a sudden spark to his voice and eyes.
"Um…you shouldn't be bothered about things like that, scoring goals isn't even part of the job description for a goalkeeper, I just do it because I can do it somehow," Dave replied with a shrug.
"Yeah, and I want to be able to do it too."
"Hmm, I see," Dave said with a smile. "Well, then you should start by putting some time into training your shooting during your training sessions."
Just before bringing the training session to an end that day, Norman brought the players to the locker room to talk about a couple of things regarding their upcoming match.
He stood in front of the board with his arms crossed behind his back while waiting for everyone to enter the room, and now that everyone was there, he cleared his throat before taking a deep breath.
"I heard some of you make some interesting comments about getting drawn against Lyon and as much as I'd like to talk about that now, I'll have to adjourn it till we're done against Spree City." He articulated. "Now about Spree City, we'll have to beat them to move on to the quarterfinals of the Bilbeth Super Cup so we can't joke with this match.
"I'm just going to reveal the formation we're going to be using in the match and the tactics I've come up with, we'll try to do some practice on it during our last training session before the match."
"So, is the formation four-three-three or four-four-two?" Adolf asked.
Almost everyone in the room had the same reaction of shock.
"For the match against Spree City on Friday, we'll be using the four-five-one formation." He declared.
'You can say that again.'