My Goalkeeping System

Chapter 347 Intense Five Minutes

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"Well, it's not the first time in the history of the sport and it's not the first time it's happening in the Bilbeth Premier League but it is the first time it's happening to Unique FC, and I'm pretty sure they're not taking it well." Jim expressed.

Who would take it lightly? They escaped the first one, escaped the second and now they were going to face the third one.

They could still escape this one and if that happened, it was going to be a huge shame to Ronino FC and that goes a long way to explain how much they didn't want to miss this.

'I just feel like everything is working against us not winning this match.' Dave said subconsciously as he adjusted his gloves. 'He didn't even check VAR when Minino got tackled like that and now he rushes to go check VAR.'

Their complaints weren't going to get them anyway and they knew that, so they had to wait for the penalty kick to be taken and hope that Dave would be able to perform another miracle like he did with the previous two.

It was no surprise that Xavier was the one stepping up to take the penalty kick, Sandro did miss the first two so it was only normal to sideline him for this one or maybe he could have been the one that told Xavier to take it because he didn't want to embarrass himself again.

"Looks like Sandro is leaving this one for Xavier, will he be able to do what his teammate couldn't do?" Steve commented.

'No pressure, I just have to stop this one like I stopped the first two, I can do it again.' Dave said as he jumped up and down on his goal line.

After making sure that all the players were behind the penalty kick taker and both the taker and keeper were ready, he blew his whistle.

"That's the whistle, will Ronino FC be able to level it at the ninetieth minute?"

Xavier didn't move immediately after hearing the whistle as he kept his gaze on the ball for a while before he slowly took three steps backward and paused for a couple of seconds.

'This is the moment.'

Once the striker was done observing what he wanted to observe, he quickly closed up on the ball and fired it toward the goalpost with his right foot.

"Xavier!"

Looks like the striker succeeded as he ended up sending Dave the wrong way.

The goalkeeper dived toward the right side of the goalpost as the striker sent the ball rolling in through the bottom left side of the goalpost and there was no doubt about that, it was a goal.

"Oh, he's done it!" Jim exclaimed as Xavier raised his hands before Zen got to him and quickly lifted him.

The away fans were chanting the name of their club loudly now and Unique FC players all had devastated looks on their faces.

'I guess it was going to end this way one way or the other.' Dave said subconsciously as he slowly sat up on the floor.

[ Quest failed ]

"With the match already in the ninetieth minute, that may have been the final moment of the match," Steve said.

"I know nobody is going to come out and say it but this match was messed up from the beginning!" Minino yelled as he made his way to the sidelines.

The expression on his face said everything about how he felt.

"Minino isn't really happy about that goal and he's clearly showing his anger," Jim said.

"Well, they were going to move to first place if they grab all three points, to be honest, I would be angry if I were him," Steve commented.

"Yeah, and now Dave's clean sheet run has come to an end, but at least he is still the only goalkeeper that has not conceded any goal from open play this season."

"Yeah, I guess that still counts as something," Steve said.

Five minutes got added to the match and it was unbelievable what Unique FC were able to pull off during those few minutes.

They were one man down but it looked like they had twelve men on the pitch.

Mateo created two chances that his teammates weren't able to convert and when he got the chance to convert on his own, he sent the ball flying over the bar.

Merino also got a clean shot which could have been a goal if the goalkeeper had not dived right in time to stop it.

As for Minino, well, he tried a desperate shot from outside the box that almost went in, the only thing that got in the way was the crossbar as the ball ended up making contact with it before flying over for a goal kick.

At the end of the day, they weren't able to find that winning goal as the referee blew his whistle to bring the match to an end.

"There's the whistle," Jim said before taking in a deep breath.

"Oh, my God, Jim, that has to be the best five minutes of a match that I had ever seen, these guys just went crazy, I wouldn't have been surprised if they had pulled out a goal from all that."

"Yeah, Steve, I was out of breath the whole time, to think that a team with one less man would be able to do this against a team with a full squad, but, at the end of the day the match comes to an end on level terms." Jim expressed.

"Yeah, that's quite sad for Unique because, to be honest, they deserved to win this match a hundred percent, luck just wasn't on their side today."

The statistics board said everything about their performance today.

The home side had eighteen shots with eight being on target while the away side had six shots with just four being on target.

The home side had seventy-two percent ball possession and the guests had whatever was left of that.

There was no doubt that Ronino FC were totally outclassed by Unique FC today and just like Steve said, they completely deserved to win, but sometimes things don't go the way they're supposed to because of certain factors whether good or bad.

Minino was one of the players to quickly make his way out of the pitch after the match as he was really pissed off but surprisingly Dave wasn't that angry or down even after losing his clean sheet streak.

I guess winning the man of the match was part of what helped brighten up his mood.

The goalkeeper was making his way toward the tunnel alongside Mateo when the two were suddenly stopped by Amber who was there for the official match interview.

"Hey, guys." She said with an awkward smile on her face because she didn't know if she should smile or keep a straight face, it would have been easier if they had won the match.

"Oh, hey, Amber," Dave said. "Where's Emma?"

"Um…. she's talking to a couple of fans, it's something she has to do today, so I'm here to take care of this." She replied.

"Oh."

"So, which one of you should I pick for the interview?"

"You can take Dave, he won the man of the match after all, I'll get going now, see you later," Mateo said before slowly walking past her.

"Are you okay?" Amber quickly turned to ask before he could walk far from her.

"Yeah, I'm just tired, bye."

He didn't even turn to reply to that question and just kept going as he gave her the response.

"He's not in a good mood but don't worry, this kind of stuff doesn't weigh him down for too long," Dave said.

"Yeah, I understand." She said with a little nod.

Dave answered all the questions that were thrown at him by Amber comfortably until she decided to throw in a question.

A question that Emma told her to avoid asking but she decided to ask it anyway.

"How do I feel about the refereeing decisions in the match." The goalkeeper repeated to make sure he heard the question right.

"Yeah, that's what I asked." She said.

"Okay. First, I'm going to say this, there are controversial decisions in almost every match of the season and if you're asking if I think those kinds of decisions happened today, my answer is yes. Did I feel like those decisions were made against us? My answer to that question is also yes, three penalties in a single match is not something you see every day and there's a chance that if it was someone else in that goalpost we would have ended up losing, we would have lost a match that we weren't supposed to lose in any way.

"But, all that aside, I think we could have done better, we wasted um….a lot of chances, and if we had converted those chances, we would have won the game no matter how many penalties they got deserving or undeserving."

"Alright, thank you, Mr. Richards for your answers, that will be all for today."

"Alright, see you later, bye," Dave said before making his way out of the area.

<So, you decided to be true to your feelings and say what you really think>

'And you've decided to say something.'