"So what do you think he’s going to tell you?"

In the backyard of William’s modest house, he was currently doing a small training drill. He moved the ball around a closed up cluster of cones and then dribbled around the cones neatly, trying his best not to allow the ball to touch the cones.

When he was done, he shot the ball into a goalpost that consisted of wooden poles holding a net upright. The bottom of the net was held firmly to the ground by two tires with heavy stones inside of them.

"I have no fucking clue," Will said as he dropped to the ground. "But it has to be good, right?"

"I guess."

At the far side of the pitch, there was a brown haired kid who looked the same age as Will, sitting on the floor. He had a protective cast on his leg. He was the one who was currently talking with Will.

"I mean they already decided to release me. Surely one training session can’t change their minds."

Alex, the brown haired boy, shrugged. "I don’t know. We won’t know unless we find out."

"How’s your injury, by the way?" Will asked as he fetched the ball from inside the net and went back to the starting point of the cones and just repeated the training drill.

"It’s getting better. The doctor said that I should be able to take off the cast by tomorrow and by next week I should be back on grass," Alex replied. His phone lit up after that and after checking his notification, he stood up. "That’s my mom. I should be on my way home right now."

Will immediately stopped running with the ball and walked Alex to the entrance of his house. The pair then parted soon after, and Will decided to cut his training short. No matter how much he wanted to practice, he still had training the next day and he didn’t want to overexert himself.

The next day, Will woke up very early in the morning. He freshened up and went to Rockliffe Park. The system had dropped another daily mission for him, and this time, it involved his shooting. He had to make ten top corner shots in twenty attempts.

It wasn’t easy, but he managed to complete it on his eighteenth shot and got rewarded with 20 Credits, taking him one step further in his goal of 500 Credits so that he could improve his potential cap.

After he was done completing the daily quest, he went and changed into the official training wear and waited for everyone to arrive. One by one, the players began coming into the locker room until it was officially time for training to begin and everyone marched out onto the field.

"Alright boys, today we’re not really going to do anything physically intensive. We’ll run a bit, pass a bit and if you behave, we’ll have a full training match," David addressed everyone as they gathered in front of him. "And remember, this is preseason. We’ll be having just two friendlies. This weekend we’ll be playing against a team of trialists who would be looking to secure a place in the team. Remember to give it your best, the place that they’re taking could easily be yours so do your best."

David talked about a few more topics before eventually ending his long pep talk and sending them to start the training exercises. They started with some yoga and exercises before doing more serious drills. At the end of the training session, there was a rondo session.

"Alright everyone, we’re going to divide ourselves into three teams of seven. There will be ten minutes on the clock and inside of those ten minutes, the people who manage to keep the ball for the most amount of time without it getting intercepted by the players in the circle will leave training early. In the same vein, anyone inside the circle who makes the most interceptions will get to leave early. Let’s start boys!"

David clapped his hands and sharply divided everyone into groups of seven. Then they randomly decided the two players who were going to stay inside the circle and thankfully for Will, he was one of the players making the circle.

When everything was sorted out, David blew his whistle and the rondo session commenced.

As soon as it commenced, Will saw something that startled him just a day before. It was the overlay that guided him as he played. It was just a rondo, so he really didn’t need it, but it was nice to have it there. Even though he thought he knew where to pass, the system would give him the best decision to make so he didn’t mind it.

As the rondo started, Will’s circle managed to keep the ball for a total of ten minutes before one of the players inside the circle managed to intercept the pass and then someone else went inside the circle.

It kept going around until finally Will ended up inside the circle even with the system’s help. His pass wasn’t fast enough and ended up being intercepted so he was forced inside the circle.

He didn’t really give it his all when he was chasing after the ball. They were less than a minute away from the end of the session so Will didn’t think he needed to do much. He just kept chasing after the ball until he decided to do a half hearted lunge.

He stretched out his leg and shifted his body weight towards the ball, and he almost managed to nick it off the legs of the person who was with the ball, but the person reacted faster. He dragged the ball back a bit before passing it through Will’s outstretched legs.

Will was about to turn around and act like nothing happened when he heard a soft thud. He turned around and saw the person who nutmegged him on the floor.

"Fuck me."

"Hahaha haha! Ohh, fuck. I can’t, I can’t stop laughing man," Liam, the person who nutmegged Will, said in between gasps.

It would’ve been alright if it was just him, but then he looked around and saw everyone else from his rondo laughing, even some people from the other rondos had to stop and laugh.

"Come on guys, like you’ve never been nutmegged before," Will sighed.

Their response to his statement was to break into an even bigger fit of laughter. Even some of the coaches began to chuckle causing Will to sigh in frustration.

"Dammit," he muttered under his breath as he sat on the grass, waiting for everyone to stop laughing.