Second Goal

The ball sped towards the goal. Suddenly, a seemingly quiet and unhelpful player came into the picture. Samuel ran forward and he stretched his leg towards the ball in a bid to stop the blitzing shot.

Samuel's stretch paid, his leg made a very little contact with the ball.

The ball made a sound that cut through the air as the ball spun in a forward position, hitting the the top corner of the post.

A disappointed sigh filled the pitch as Eric went to take the corner kick.

Eric hurled the ball into the penalty area that was crowded with players but it headed away by Zoe. The ball fell outside the penalty area, landing just in front of Adrienne.

Adrienne controlled the ball, and in a moment, he wass sent stumbling to the floor by Soma who appeared out of nowhere with an angry sliding tackle.

Krystal Fc had been pressuring marbles all this while, but it wasn't that evident because Marbles took the pressure lightly. The control of the flow of the game was in the hands of Marbles and Neo just realized that. Neo wiped away sweat from his nose as his brain took one-second analyzing time.

So that's it...We haven't really been pressuring them all this while, they just let out play around for a while...and whenever we were about to play something dangerous, they would suddenly step up and stop our challenge, I wouldn't have ever realized it if I hadn't struggled to create a play that broke us out of their manipulations, the others had probably not yet realized it too... Neo took a glance at Marbles coach who was grinning lightly by the sidelines. Incredible...that old man must be something else....

Soma skipped past Mark who stuck a desperate foot to the ball. After surmounting the first obstacle, he passed the ball to Walter who was running the counter beside him.

Walter deleted the first opposition that he met and he procceeded to give a high flying through pass to Alf who was running forward at the other end of the pitch. It was a run that was going to do a lot of damage if he was allowed to go free.

Bice followed Alf's run immediately. But it became a whole different story when Alf suddenly started running in a weird manner, using a peculiar footwork, but it was very different from's Neo's own.

Bice fell to the floor without even knowing it. All he knew was that his vision suffered a slight spin and he was on the ground the next instant. The footwork Bice used was quite different from Neo's, Neo's footwork helped him to get away from opponents, if you were unlucky, you would fall to the floor, but Bice's own footwork came with the idea of throwing you to the floor to start with. It was like a martial arts skill.

Alf's control sent Miles slipping and falling to his feet, then he used a 360 degree turn to get away from Liam. Neo noticed that their defense wasn't doing anything much, it was just hard for them to stop these Marbles strikers. On the other hand, Marbles defense were doing a decent job in managig to keep them at bay. If he was to be sincere, the only people that were pressurig Marbles in this game were him, Cai and Mark. Then Eric and Aesop played the supportive roles, it was as if the other players were invisible.

Lida ran towards Afl who immediately tapped the ball to Soma, without even waiting for the control, Soma looped the ball over Lida to Alf who was still running forward. Lida was surprised when he turned to face Soma and he didn't see the ball with him, he turned to face Alf and the ball was not also in his possession, Alf had returned the ball to Soma. in a fit of panic, he rushed to his penalty area to help the goalkeeper but slipped and fell like his two teammates.

Zuri was the last man standing, to make his burden lighter, he rushed out of the goal post to go face Soma who was running at him. Soma didn't bother with any Extras, he simply passed the ball to Alf who passed the ball who passed the ball behind the goalkeeper.

Soma was faced with an empty net and he tapped the ball into the back of the net.

The score was Marbles: 2, Krystal Fc: 0.

It was only forty minutes into the first half, and Krystal Fc was already down by two goals. Marbles was not a team that you could easily bottle their lead, so Krystal Fc could as well forget about this game and focus on defeating their next two oppnents.

Krystal Fc was already starting to feel despair, Neo could see his players move around with a lowered head, preparing for the next play. Neo didn't say any encouragng words, he wasn't going to boost their morales by saying some boring words and risk throwing them into greater despair by conceding another Goal, rather he was going to boost their morale by scoring a goal, then they would automatically get fired up.

That's just how Human beings work.