The pressure doubled as the half wore into stoppage time, not because Gold had suddenly found another gear, but because Green were being forced to make the same difficult decisions of how to defend their lead, over and over again that even small movements had started to feel like sprints.
Nobu had begun dropping almost level with Junpei and Toma whenever Gold restarted from deep, giving his own side an extra passing option against Haru and Hikaru’s pressing, while Koji and Eiji pushed higher up the flanks to stretch and overload their midfield, leaving Yuji and Reiji to occupy the spaces in behind between the midfield and defenders.
Green were finding it hard to hold their shape but holding their shape and staying compact could only help them so far.
Kosei pointed Reiji out to Yuji as the two of them shifted together, careful not to let Gold’s constant rotation drag them apart, while Shingo kept glancing over his shoulder every time Nobu received the ball, worried because Nobu had already shown that he’d happily carry it forward himself if nobody stepped up to meet him.
The whole middle of the pitch had settled into a strange, taut standoff.
With team Green never quite committing enough bodies forward to properly wrestle back control, Gold never quite reckless enough to leave the door open for the counter that had already burned them twice.
Nobu finally broke the stalemate, receiving a pass from Junpei with his body half turned inside, as he anticipated Akira drifting inward to cut off the obvious pass toward Reiji, and decided dribbling through the middle.
Shingo immediately stepped up but Nobu already several meters in stride Switched the ball out left of the attack to his winger.
The switch forced Green’s entire midfield to stretch on the move, and by the time Akira had crossed to cover, Akio had already peeled off behind the defenders dragging Daizen away from the edge of his own box to contest for the incoming pass.
The ball landed just ahead of them, as they chased.
Akio got there first and hit the ball first time with his heel, passing the ball behind him to Koji who had advanced, and then dropped deeper between the lines to support him.
Daizen tracked the drop, closing the passing lane, as Koji receiving at the final-third cushioned the back heel pass and with pressure mounting the left-back crossed the ball early to the edge of the box.
The low cross gliding across, to the other-end, and found Reiji at the edge of the box who took it between the lines with Kosei already closing, feinted a pass toward outside before bursting into the gap in between. Read this novel at novelping . com for the best experience.
Kosei recovered fast enough to stay in the picture, but the movement had already pulled Shingo inward too, and Yuji found himself with Space at edge of the box to which Reiji noticed and found him without breaking his own stride.
Yuji took it in stride as well and shaped to shoot.
The moment not going unnoticed to Gen who put himself in front of the ball to try and block the shot, but the shot from Yuji never came instead, at the last possible second, chose to slip the ball across to Masaru.
Masaru who had been lurking in the box received the ball with his back to goal, inconvenient, and turned but Kiyoshi anticipated it reacted first, throwing his body across the shooting lane before Masaru could properly turn, and when the striker tried to drag the ball around him their legs tangled together and it spilled loose.
The loose ball landing in the single worst possible place for Green, by their own penalty spot with defenders scattered in three different directions and the goalkeeper forced to decide, in a fraction of a second, whether to come or stay.
Masaki came and got to the ball first, dropping low and wrapping both arms fully around the ball a half-step before Masaru’s boot could arrive, and Masaru, credit where it was due, pulled his own leg away rather than risk catching the keeper’s hands on the way through.
The whole fence roared at once at the moment, Masaki stayed down a moment on the grass before rising with the ball cradled against his chest, and somewhere behind the chain-link a voice shouted “One more time, there’s still time”.
It felt like the crowd wanted them to concede because it was not the first ‘one more time’.
Masaki couldn’t blame the crowd, he also saw that they were getting closer every time.
Masaki rolling the ball out to Daizen, who found himself immediately hemmed in on the right with Koji already recovered into position, forcing him to carry it rather than find Akira cleanly.
Haru had already started drifting toward the right channel to offer an option, Hikaru dragging Toma the opposite direction to open the exact kind of space that had worked for them once already, and when Daizen finally found Akira, the player took his first touch inside, then immediately turned outside leaving Koji who stepped to meet him, wrong footed and he glided pass him.
Akira, carried the ball with pace as he reached the flank and crossed the ball inside the box.
The cross found Haru in the air, giving away size to Junpei but reading the flight of it early enough to arrive underneath rather than beside him, making the defender’s header awkward even in defeat.
The ball looping up rather than being cleared properly, and Hikaru rising to meet the second ball at the exact same instant Toma did, both of them colliding hard enough to send it spilling loose to the edge of the box, where Shingo arrived and struck it first-time through a crowd of bodies. Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
It deflected wickedly off Yuji’s leg on the way through, and Masato had to adjust his whole body mid-flight before diving low to his right and holding it clean against the grass, no rebound this time, the danger swallowed whole.
The clock kept moving but it felt slow for Green and fast for Gold, And still Gold came with hope, Nobu now nearly impossible to pin down at all as Green’s midfield unable to decide how to contain his influence because every time Kosei stepped to close him, Nobu simply moved the ball elsewhere, and every time Kosei held his ground instead, Nobu carried it forward himself.
Haru had started dropping deeper than he had all half, not because he’d stopped pressing but because every forward step he took seemed to open exactly the passing lane Gold needed behind him, and when he caught Hikaru’s eye the two of them dropped together without a word passing between them, an instinct built from an entire half spent reading each other rather.
It slowed Gold’s attack, briefly, but Reiji once again found the top of the box and looked for Masaru, but Kiyoshi had planted himself directly in front of the striker and refused to yield the space for a clean touch.
Akio came inside instead, took the return pass, met Takeru’s balanced challenge, tried to squeeze between him and Kosei, and found the door shut there too.
He played the backward pass to Koji and he picked it up and restarted whole sequence of trying to work the ball into the box, with relentless patience of a team that had stopped trying to force a single moment of brilliance and waited for a chance to present itself.
A chance presented itself, as Fumiya stepped too far toward Shoma and Nobu saw it the instant it happened, he demanded the ball from Yuji.
Yuji passed him the ball and he immediately played it diagonally to Shoma, who’d drifted inside from the left exactly far enough to find the gap Fumiya had left behind.
Eiji was already overlapping outside him, forcing Fumiya into the the impossible choice of wether to follow Shoma or protect the space behind.
He took too long to decide as Shoma cut inside with the ball tight to his left foot, Masaki narrowing his angle and dropping low to stay ready for either a pass or shot at goal.
Masaru already starting his run behind the defense, Reiji arriving a half-step behind him with the defenders were holding the line with nowhere left to go.
Shoma struck it low, through a thicket of legs, and for one flickering instant it looked like it had gone straight through Kiyoshi’s without Masaki ever properly seeing it, until his trailing hand dropped at the last possible moment and turned it away.
The save keeping the ball in play, as it bounced dangerously across the face of his own goal with Masaru sliding in and missing it by inches.
But Reiji arrived a half-second later, stretched, and got enough on it to send the ball flying toward the open half of the goal that Masaki, recovering from the first save, was already airborne, stretching, reaching and the entire fence rose with him, the whole ground holding its breath together for the single longest second of the afternoon so far.