Greatest Of All Legends

***9th January 2022***

**Stade Roumde Adjia**

*11:24am*

The Super Eagles players were at the stadium where the match against Egypt was to take place and they were there to examine the stadium and do a little training session there for the day.

The media teams had come and gone, taking the pictures and shooting videos that will be put on TV and the internet later and the players were finally now getting to the important part of the training session.

The players were in a crowd around Augustine Eguavoen as the man began explaining their tactics for the match against Egypt.

"Our main goal for the game is to lock Salah out. He is the danger man we have to watch out for and he is the opponents lifeline,"

"If we lock him out, then we have the game in our hands,"

"To do that, we cannot give him space so we will be playing the 4-4-2 formation for that game,"

"No matter which position he will be playing, I want two men on him at all times,"

"If he is in center, the two centerbacks will stay on him while one of the midfielders will stay behind to block any passes in his direction,"

"Once we can do that, then the rest of the game is in our hands. They will try to pass to him and once we intercept the ball, we go direct,"

"Don’t waste time and get the ball up the field as quickly as possible,"

"It’s not about how long we have the ball, it’s about how quickly we make them regret losing it, do you understand?" The manager asked the players.

"Yes sir," they replied collectively and training began.

The manager split the team into two sides; Team A and Team. The players more likely to start the upcoming game were put on team A with the exception of Jason who was put on team B.

Jason was put on the second team to replace Salah in the upcoming match and the training consisted of Team A doing their best to prevent Team B from giving Jason the ball or shutting him down as quickly as possible if they couldn’t stop the ball from reaching him.

The training went well... For the most part at least.

The players on Team A were able to get on a defensive rhythm and managed to restrain Team B from unleashing Jason by getting the ball to him and they also managed to somewhat stop the other players from taking advantage of Jason drawing attention.

However that only happened for the first ten minutes of the scrimmage.

After conceding a second goal, Jason called the members of Team B over and gave them new instructions.

When the scrimmage finally continued, things continued and seemed to be going in the same direction until Jason suddenly started running all over the pitch in the final third, refusing to stay in one location.

With him no longer staying on one side of the pitch, the players were at a loss on how to defend.

Should they follow him around or should they stay back and stick to a zonal defending style instead.

Unfortunately for them, against Jason neither one of those two were the correct option.

When they left Jason and allowed him to move all over and receive the ball, the other members of team B surged forward into dangerous positions, pulling apart the defenders of Team A and allowing Jason to comfortably take on only one or two players at a time, which for Jason was a gift.

Whether to take a long shot, dribble through and get closer, or find a teammate in a dangerous position with an incisive pass, the choice remained with Jason and since he could do all those things, Team A suffered for it.

Eguavoen shouted at the players on Team A from the sidelines after they conceded a second goal in under ten minutes, telling them to man mark and tight mark Jason instead of using a zonal defending style.

However, no sooner had they done that than Jason changed his style of movement. He didn’t stop moving all over the pitch, but this time he started making runs in behind as well, drawing the defenders along with him, but the ball hardly ever came his way because he was simply playing the role of a dummy runner.

However, the Team A defenders couldn’t exactly stop defending against him because of that because the moment they refused to stay with Jason, the ball came flying his way instead and Jason getting the ball that close to the goal only ever translated into a dangerous opportunity.

In the end, the training could be classified as something of a success as Jason’s performance ensured that his teammates had enough experience on the tactics the manager had for the game, but Jason ran them completely ragged during the session.

After watching Jason in the training session, Augustine Eguavoen was very impressed and could finally stop worrying.

In the end, Jason had only been with the national team for a little while and had been injured prior to this.

The team’s main man Osimhen was injured and unavailable for the tournament and while the team didn’t have a shortage of good players, losing an important player like him did not bode well for their chances in the competition.

If Jason didn’t hit the ground running, then their chances for the competition would be in doubt, but after watching Jason’s performance at the training session, Augustine finally began to believe in his chances.

Even if they might not win, their performance in the tournament wouldn’t be disappointing, though he of course wasn’t going to be content with merely performing well.

The NFF already had a verbal agreement with a new manager for the national team and he was merely an interim but he wanted the job and if he wanted to cause an upset and make the NFF go back on their agreement with the new manager, then winning the tournament was the least he had to do.