The miss didn’t slow the match down.
If anything, it seemed to convince both teams that the goal they’d been searching for was actually there, waiting for whoever proved willing to reach it first, and Gold returned to their positions with a sharper sense of purpose than they’d shown in the opening minutes.
Nobu had already begun to understand what Green’s midfield was doing.
They didn’t want to chase the ball across the full width of the pitch, because they were slower than them, and the fact that every time they spread out wide they risked opening a lane straight through the middle didn’t help, but staying narrow instead meant surrendering the flanks entirely, and Gold had started to make their decision a painful one to endure.
Yuji dropped closer to Nobu whenever Gold rebuilt from the back, buying Eiji and Koji enough room to push forward without leaving the midfield stripped bare behind them.
Reiji drifted into the right half-space, not standing directly between Green’s midfield and defense but occupying that narrow, awkward strip of ground where Kosei had to keep checking over his shoulder without ever quite being able to step toward him aggressively.
Akio stayed wide, almost level with the last defender, forcing Daizen into the specific, uncomfortable decision of whether to follow him out or hold his ground closer to the penalty area.
None of it was complicated football.
It simply demanded, over and over, that somebody make a decision, and eventually somebody was going to make the wrong one.
Moments later, Koji received the ball near the right touchline, Akio immediately drifted deeper, dragging Daizen along with him, and Koji used the space that opened to carry the ball forward himself rather than release it early.
Daizen hesitated, caught between protecting the space at his own back and stopping Koji’s advance outright, and that half-second of hesitation was all Koji needed to reach the final third before Akira could recover across the pitch to help.
Koji played it inside across to Reiji, who took the ball on his right foot angled toward the center, using his first touch not to simply stop it but to move it a half-step away from Kosei’s closing leg and for a moment Gold had three players arranged around the edge of the box, Akio pinned wide, Masaru occupying both center backs at once just by existing between them.
Gen stepped forward to close the gap.
Reiji saw it happen and, rather than force a pass into Masaru that Gen was already anticipating, carried the ball two further towards goal, waiting for Gen’s to fully commit before finally sliding it out to Akio, already drifting back toward the touchline to receive it in stride.
Daizen turned with him immediately.
Akio slowed his run just enough to sell the idea to cut inside, then explode to the outside with the ball in tow and Daizen, who was duped by the fake exactly the way Akio wanted him to, closed the inside lane at precisely the moment Koji was already accelerating past him on the outside.
Akio rlifted his head to find Masaru, and sent a low cross curling into the gap between the goalkeeper and both center backs.
Gen got a boot to it and the deflection changed the ball’s whole trajectory, sending it low and awkward toward the near post, and Masaki reacted a half-beat late because of it, but he got both hands down in time regardless smothering it before Masaru could arrive to finish it off. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Green had survived, again, and the crowd reacted with the specific mixed noise of a crowd that had was simply reacting to whatever happened in front of them, some of it encouragement, some of it frustration, both sides drifting back into shape while Green’s players traded brief, urgent instructions among themselves.
Gold where in charge and the amount of chances they created reflected that as they tried again almost immediately, after Akira couldn’t trap the ball from Masaki’s long-pass and it bounced of his foot for a throw-in.
Nobu dropped deep to collect from the throw in with Kosei glued to him, it didn’t matter as he spun away and switched the whole play out to Shoma their right-winger.
Shoma took it in stride near the sideline, faced up against Fumiya, who lowered his stance and waited rather than committing early, and with Shoma carrying it forward slowly.
Fumiya stalked him waiting for the best moment to steal the ball and before that chance presented itself to, Shoma passed the ball inside before he could track it the ball was already moving behind him, a one-two with Reiji, as Shoma chased the ball ahead of him.
Fumiya turned and sprinted chasing after the ball, catching up to Shoma before he could get enough time on the ball.
He used his shoulder to deny any clean angle, and the ball eventually rolled out of play for nothing more than a throw-in.
The match had settled, by then, into the specific shape of a contest where Gold were asking more questions than Green had good answers for.
Masaki received a back pass from Kosei with Masaru pressing, taking a touch away from the striker’s direction, and trying to find Takeru with a ball threaded across the face of Gold’s own defensive line.
The pass arrived slightly behind him as Takeru stretched for it and caught it wrong, but by luck went through the Eiji’s legs sending it skidding into the gap between himself and the rightback that was caught flat footed.
Takeru chased after it, but Nobu who was dropping back to help defend, accelerated onto it just as Takeru arrived at the exact same moment and their shoulders colliding hard enough that Takeru’s first touch skipped away, to the edge of the box, from him rather than settling.
Haru went after it, seeing Reiji going after it, he put his all in and put his own body between Reiji and the ball, dropped his center of gravity, and poked it forward with the outside of his boot.
Junpei stepped in to challenge, caught Haru’s shin with his own boot in the process, and Haru stumbled, balance nearly gone entirely, before he planted his back foot and used the very momentum of the collision to spin himself around the defender instead of going down.
He lost control of the ball, it had barely traveled three meters the whole time but Hikaru had already read a scramble developing and drifted into the right side of the box, dragging Toma out of position with him.
When Haru reached the loose ball again and tried to cross it across, but Junpei recovered fast enough to stretch a leg across him, the ball catching his shin and looping up awkwardly into the air, and suddenly everyone on the pitch was converging on the same small patch of grass, at once, inside the box.
Hikaru rose highest and got to it first but the ball came off the top of his head, rather than clean-off his forehead, looping rather than driving toward goal and Masato who had jumped to claim it only for him to crash against Toma, who was avoiding Hikaru coming down, only to knock Masato backward mid-catch, with the ball slipping loose from his gloves as both of them crashed down together.
It fell directly into the six-yard box where Haru was rushing to, but so was Junpei and Masato who was scrambling back up with Toma.
Junpei got his boot to it first, a clearance that should have ended the whole sequence cleanly except Haru threw himself across the line of the ball at the exact same time. Read the latest chapters at g.com.
The block by Haru changed it’s direction that instead of traveling safely away from the goal, it ricocheted toward the far post instead.
Masato twisted into a save, got a single hand to it, and for one long half-second the ball simply slowed against his fingertips before continuing on anyway, crossing the line with nothing left to stop it.
Team Green erupted soon as the ball crossed the line, the relieve after the storm weathered.
“GOAL!” the referee called, arm pointed toward the center circle, and the crowd along the fence exploded with it — not because anyone had witnessed a beautiful passage of football, but because the ball had simply refused to die, because every single clearance had produced another collision instead of clean relief, because Haru had somehow stayed on his feet through all of it when falling would have been the easier and more natural thing to do.
Haru pushed himself up off the grass, one knee still pressed into the dirt, his shirt pulled half out of place from the scramble.
Hikaru grabbed him by the shoulder, laughing, breathless.
“You’re always ready to chase, like a chihuahua” Hikaru said.
Haru looked toward the goal, still catching his breath.
“I’m a Bulldog, a Chihuahua doesn’t bite.” Hikaru laughed again, louder this time.
Gold walked back toward their own half without any real anger in it, just the uncomfortable recognition of a team that had controlled almost every meaningful sequence of the last five minutes and had somehow still found themselves a goal down for it.
Nobu walked toward Toma, gave him a consoling pat behind his back and said “It’s not over” and Toma nodded, already resetting, already moving on from the mishap.
Just like that, out of the blue, Green had responded with a goal to Gold’s pressure in the twenty-third minute.
It wasn’t a normal goal and definitely not an amazing one, but they got one even if in the ugliest and most accidental way a goal can ever be scored.
(Author)
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