Chapter 600: Borussia On The Bus
**7th April 2021**
A huge bus carrying the Dortmund players was moving through the streets of Turin, it’s front and back and flanked by other cars for security.
“Beautiful city, this place,” Akanji said, looking out the window as the car moved at a uniform pace through the streets.
“Since when did you care about the scenery?” Witsel asked Akanji with a raised eyebrow.
“Since never man, I’m just a lil’ bit nervous, I guess,” Akanji replied honestly, not bothering to hide.
“Why’re you nervous though?” Bellingham asked, poking his head over from behind.
“Co on man, we’re going against Mr. Champions League, in the Champions League. Of course, I’ll be nervous,” Akanji replied.
“Ronaldo in Real Madrid was the Mr. Champions League, this Uventus version of him is not as scary,” unier across the aisle also joined in the conversation.
“That’s what Diego Sione said before Ronaldo stunted on his a** with a hat-trick and knocked him out single-handedly from two nil behind just last year,”Humls who was seated behind unier didn’t wait for anyone to convince and took on the job to convince his seatmate himself.
“Madrid or not, Ronaldo is a handful for anyone. One doesn’t get to five ballon d’ors just by being a team player,”
“Also, Uve is not a weak team and they should have won the Champions League long ago, Ronaldo himself has personally killed their dreams a few tis. He might look like he’s past his pri, but that was only a bit over a year ago and he’s still slamming numbers that no one in our team currently has,” Humls told unier.
Humls wasn’t a Ronaldo fan or anything, but as soone from the sa generation as Ronaldo, he sotis had to remind his younger teammates about players like Ronaldo, ssi, Neymar, e.t.c, who they thought were past their pri and no longer as dangerous as before.
He had to do it during the group stage when they were up against PSG and had beaten them in the first round, but they hadn’t listened and Neymar had punished them in the second round.
Luckily, they had still qualified for the knockout stages, however, it seed so of the younger players hadn’t learned their lessons.
These guys had yet to understand that because many top-level players retired in their early thirties did not an that a player’s pri was when he was in his twenties.
“Uve have an injury crisis as far as I know. They don’t look unbeatable to ,” unier scoffed, still not taking heed to Humls words.
“At this point, I can only pray you don’t turn to a highlight reel when you face off against that Jason guy… if he plays,” Akanji said to unier from across the aisle, seeing that Humls had given up and was no longer interested in saying anything to convince this headstrong guy.
“Jason who? He better up he’s on the other flank and not up against . I’ll lock him up,” unier continued digging his own grave.
“Hey Jadon, Marco!” You think Thomas can keep that Jason guy in check?” Bellingham called out to Jadon and Marco.
” He’d better,” Marco scoffed, having heard all unier’s boasting from before.
Jadon hadn’t heard it though and had only heard when Bellingham called out to him.
“He’s gonna get all the smoke, and then he’d be like a lost puppy chasing his own tail,” Jadon smirked as he took off his headphones.
He was not going to lose the chance to tease his own teammate.
“Pffffttt, hahahaha,” Bellingham and the others burst into laughter.
“Bruh said he’d chase after his own tail, hahaha,” Bellingham laughed, falling back into his own seat.
“There’s no way he can do that,” Thomas countered, his face red, but no one could tell whether it was from anger or embarrassnt.
“Take it from , there is more than a fifty percent chance that he can get past you if you go up against each other,” Reus, the team captain said, his words surprising everyone.
“Seriously, cap?” Jadon asked, the smirk on his face disappearing.
“Didn’t you guys watch his highlight reels? That guy can move,”
“The videos were mostly filled with him running circles around his marker and most of the ti, he can’t be kept in check,”
“And he can score goals too,” Reus intoned, sighing deeply.
“So you’re saying if we focus more on shutting out Ronaldo, this guy can punish us for that, but at the sa ti, we can’t focus on only him either,”
“However, if we focus on the two of them, there’s still Dybala, Chiesa, or whoever else will be playing, or even the two of them?” Thomas asked, creating a scenario in his head.
“I already feel exhausted,” Akanji sighed.
“And that’s with the injury crisis they have,” Humls reminded them.
“Actually, that injury crisis is a bit annoying for us too because now, we don’t know how will arrange themselves on the pitch,” Edin, the interim manager joined the conversation.
“They have enough squad depth to rearrange their formation or their playing style due to the injury problem so we really don’t know what we will be up against,”
“We can guess, but it wouldn’t make much of a difference,”
“What you guys need to do is follow our ga plan. Defend well, soak in pressure, and if you see space to get in behind, make your move,”
“Everything more, nothing less,” Edin told the players, trying to motivate them against their opponents.
He knew that while the quality of his players couldn’t be doubted, the Uventus team were the widely acclaid favorites.
It was just what everyone thought and their performances so far emphasized, hence the the Dortmund players could not help but feel a little pressure even though they weren’t that far off in terms of player quality.
Edin was rely an interim manager who was filling the role until the board found another manager, but he was going to do his job, and he was going to do it well.
… Or at least that’s what he wanted to do.
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