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Chapter 184: Road to Liga NOS Champions 2019/20 XI

They would have to fight extra hard in the coming match days to stay out of the relegation zone, but none of these concerned the Porto team.

They were the victors of a hard-fought win and they would celebrate their victory in style… indoors of course.

**5th July 2020**

The next match day arrived and it was time for Porto to take another step towards becoming League Leaders and they would be welcoming Belenenses at the Estadio do Dragao for the match.

Belenenses SAD was a team that was even closer to the relegation zone than Pacos de Ferreira whom Porto had played against the previous week, and now they had to play against a Porto team that saw them as a challenge on their way toward the league title.

It was already sure that it would be an upward battle for the Belenenses team, but they didn’t have a choice other than to play their best and hope that they could win… or at least draw the game.

The two teams were soon on the field for the pre-match warm-ups which didn’t take much time and the players soon headed back into their respective locker rooms for the pre-match tactical meeting.

Sergio Conceicao was making the players continue with his favorite 4-4-2 formation, but this time, he was going to have the four midfielders take the diamond shape and have a center attacking midfielder and a center defensive midfielder instead of two center midfielders.

The starting line-up for the match against Belenenses was;

Augustin Marchesin in goal,

Diogo Leite and Ivan Marcano as the two center backs,

Alex Telles and Mattheus Uribe as the right and left back respectively,

Danilo Perreira was the center defensive midfielder while Otavio would be playing as the team’s central attacking midfielder.

On the left side of the midfield was Jason and on the right was Fabio Viera,

Tiquiniho Soares and Moussa Marega were the two strikers who would be leading the front line.

By 9:30 pm, the players of both teams were on the field and ready to start and the referee blew his whistle.

*Fweeeeeee*

Porto kicked off the game and immediately got right down to business with the Belenenses team. They fancied themselves the bigger team and they wanted to play as such.

Playing a 1-nil game against Pacos de Ferreira in their last match had challenged the Porto manager and he had made his displeasure known to the players.

It wasn’t a loss, but the manager felt that they should have played better against a bottom-tier team as those were the opponents with which it was easiest to rack up their goal difference, but his team had wasted that opportunity, only managing to score from a corner kick and then staying silent for the rest of the game.

Sergio Conceicao didn’t like that and he had challenged his players to utterly destroy the Belenenses team and the players planned to make the manager happy by following his orders thus the match began at a high tempo.

Since they were the team in possession right from the kick-off, they immediately launched an attack that ended with a shot narrowly missing the left side of the Belenenses goal.

From there on, it was a high-tempo back and forth with the Belenenses team which was also fighting back as best as they could, not wanting to be swept away by the Porto team, but even then, they were slowly losing ground against the Porto team.

The Porto team always made sure to control the flow of the game with strategic possession tactics.

They constantly passed the ball around in their opponent’s half of the field, causing the Belenenses team to chase after them constantly, always on the high press, but the ball almost always eluded them.

Almost at the end of a particularly breath-holding first half, the Porto team finally made a mark on the game in the 39th minute.

The Belenenses team had regained possession after a long time of chasing after the ball, but due to the Porto team continuously pressuring the Belenenses team, the ball was gradually played further back into the Belenenses half of the field until it finally reached the goalkeeper who cleared the ball into the midfield after seeing that there were no free options for a pass.

The ball flew into the middle of the field and was contested for by players of both teams, but the person who won the contest for the ball was Ivan Marcano who headed the ball in the direction of Danilo Perreira.

Quickly controlling the ball on his chest, Danilo Perreira glanced around looking for an open teammate before finally sending the ball to Alex Telles who immediately passed the ball to Jason who had drawn back to receive the ball.

On receiving the ball, Jason had begun heading down the left side of the field, coming face to face with a Belenenses player and getting rid of him with a La Crocheta, after which he continued down the left wing.

Seeing an opportunity, Jason decided to try something he had been working on.

Ever since his first goal for the club, Jason had started learning how to do the trivela pass from Otavio and Telles who were the best at it on the team.

The Trivela was a way of using the outside of one’s foot to hit the ball and making it curl in an outward direction from the player and it could be used both as a passing technique and a shooting technique.

Jason admired the skill for the versatility it allowed him and he was about to reap the benefits of his training as he hit the ball with the outside of his right foot, sending the ball into an upward and outward curling path from the left side of the field.

The ball curled perfectly into the path of Tiquiniho Soares who caught the ball off his leg with a controlled motion and brought the ball under control before he rushed into the Belenenses 18-yard box with the ball and smashed it past the goalkeeper.