八字万年历

Chapter 229: Europa League Draw

At one of the conference rooms at the Althoff Grandhotel Schloss Bensberg, the Porto players were seated and watching the TV where the draw for the Europa League Quarter-finals was being shown live.

Manchester United, Sevilla, Inter Milan, Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Basel, Copenhagen, and Wolverhampton Wanderers were the last eight teams in the Europa League after a hard-fought battle in the Round of 16.

The draw to select who would be going up against who was what was currently being shown live on TV and not just the Porto team, but all the other teams involved in the Europa League, as well as the fans of those teams and even neutral fans from different teams, were watching the Europa League draw live.

The difference between these sets of people was that the players in the thick of it were wishing they got a weaker opponent while their fans were doing all sorts of prayer battles in the same direction.

Even Jason who was in the conference room couldn’t help but wish that they had to face a weaker opponent since it would be easier that way.

That was not to say he did not like a challenge, but when a trophy was involved, all he wanted was to hold onto it even if he had to do it by trashing up weaker teams.

Anyway, he wasn’t the one doing the draw so why should he feel guilty because his team was placed against a ‘weaker team’?

While he was thinking that, the draw began and the first team to be drawn was Shaktar Donetsk and they were put up against Basel.

With this draw, the fans of the two teams had their heart rate return back to a normal rate as they had escaped being put up against the dangerous teams and would have to battle it against a much weaker team compared to the others.

It could be called a battle of the mid, but the fans wouldn’t care as they could at least see a way forward unlike the two other weaker teams who were already in trouble if they were put up against the four dangerous teams remaining in the draw.

The draw soon continued and Manchester United was the next team to be drawn and they were put up against Copenhagen.

Seeing this draw, the Manchester United team and fans heaved a sigh of relief, and ease washed over them.

The match wouldn’t be a complete ease, but it was not going to be too difficult to win.

The Copenhagen fans on the other hand were already tearing out their hair while a few of the pessimistic Copenhagen players began heading back to their rooms to pack up their bags because despite Manchester United’s fall from grace since Legendary manager Alex Ferguson left in 2014, they were still a team to reckon with and not someone that Copenhagen could just think about beating.

The officials holding the draw did not know about all this and simply continued the draw with Inter Milan being the next team to be picked.

Going up against them would be Porto.

The moment this was shown on the screen, silence swept across the conference room where the Porto team was watching the draw.

This was a tough draw.

The Inter Milan team had finished second in the Serie A that season and had put up a performance worthy of that position in all competitions.

In the first place, the Serie A was a higher-ranked league than the Liga NOS and the Inter Milan team was a very strong team.

This was not to say that Porto couldn’t win, but it was very clear that it was going to be a very uphill battle if they were going to try and win the game.

The Porto players soon regained their color as they concluded that the match would only be difficult and wasn’t a losing game.

They could still win despite this tough opponent, after all, if they didn’t even have the courage to face this, then they might as well just forfeit the competition and go back home to Portugal.

On the Inter Milan side, head manager, Antonio Conte began thinking up a suitable game plan to go against the Porto team as he also knew that it was going to be a tough match.

Whoever among the two teams slipped up first was likely to be the team to lose so his team’s defense must be strong and the attack even stronger.

‘We must contain their attacks while making sure to push forward with ours and hit them on the counter as many times as possible,’ Antonio Conte thought to himself as he began creating the ideal game plan to go against the Porto team.

‘We must also find a way to keep that kid silent for that game,’ he thought, the image of Jason flashing across his mind.

Antonio Conte was among the managers who were enamored by Jason’s talent and had been looking to add them to his team, but the reason why Conte hadn’t had the Inter Milan team make an offer was that firstly, his preferred formation didn’t make use of wingers, but rather wing-backs who shuttled back and forth, and since Jason’s defense wasn’t the best so he wasn’t suited for such a position.

Secondly, Jason hadn’t been on the scene for long and he still wanted to find out more about Jason’s talents, and lastly, the Inter Milan team also didn’t have the resources to facilitate such a move at that moment.

Normally, Inter Milan wasn’t a team that spent big money on transfers so there was no way they would be making an offer of a hundred million for a six-month rookie, rather, they were more inclined to wait until Jason’s contract would expire in the coming years.

For now however, Antonio Conte’s thoughts were on how to bring Jason’s performances to a halt against his team and not to bring him to the team so he immediately started devising defensive measures to keep Jason away.

‘Ah, that’s right… he hasn’t experienced Italian football yet,’ The Inter Milan head manager suddenly came to a realization a smile that looked a bit devious.

On the Porto side, Sergio Conceicao was also already trying to devise a game plan to go against the Inter Milan team, but the officials holding the draw weren’t privy to this and went on to call the last draw which everyone already knew.

Sevilla would be going against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Finally, the dates for the matches were selected and as luck would have it, Porto would be facing Inter Milan the very next day.

Things were looking serious for those two teams.