My Goalkeeping System

The bright rays of the sun shone into the room from the glass, the rays of the morning sun shone on both Mateo and Dave who were still fast asleep on their beds.

It was only after a few seconds that Dave slowly opened his eyes, he blinked a couple of times and rubbed his eyes with both of his hands before slowly sitting up on his bed.

"I guess it's morning already." He said before turning his gaze to Mateo who was still fast asleep on his bed.

<Good morning>

'Good morning, Catherine.' He said subconsciously before stepping down from his bed.

He checked the time on the wall clock to see that it was 6:05 AM.

"The match doesn't start till 2:00 PM so..." He muttered as he made his way to the bathroom.

Today was the day, the day they faced off against FC Basel in the Europa conference league qualifiers to determine who was going to go through to the group stage.

This was just the first leg but they had to take it seriously, beating FC Basel here meant that they would face them at home in the second leg as the team with the advantage.

By the time Dave came out from the bathroom, Mateo was already sitting on his bed staring through the glass.

He noticed Dave enter the room so he had to turn his gaze.

"Oh, Dave, good morning." The winger said.

"Good morning," Dave said as he walked past him to his bed. "We have about seven hours to get ready for today."

"That's more than enough time," Mateo said before springing up from his bed.

"Yeah, you seem quite energetic this morning."

"Well, what can I say?" The winger said as he stretched both of his hands. "I'm just excited."

"Excited, huh."

"Yeah, this is the first time since I was promoted to the first team that we're facing a team from the Swiss Super League in a competitive match, it's also the first time I'm participating in a European competition."

"It's also my first time participating in a European competition, so I guess I'm excited too," Dave said before smiling at him. "Basel has been in spectacular form since the start of this season, so this isn't going to be an easy match."

"They've been in spectacular form and so have we," Mateo said, but he had to rephrase his words. "Okay, we haven't been as spectacular as them, but that doesn't really mean anything, it's going to be a tough match quite alright but I'm positive that we'll come out on top."

"I like your positivity, I think we can do it," Dave said with a nod.

_____ _____

There was only an hour left before the match kicked off and that was the reason why the players from both teams could be seen warming up for the match on the pitch.

The stands on all sides were slowly getting filled up by fans from both teams but as expected, FC Basel had roughly seventy percent of their fans in the stands, the rest were Unique FC fans.

The players were done with the normal warm-up up procedures and were now practicing with the ball.

"I didn't get to feel it properly yesterday, but this grass has a nice texture," Mateo said as he joggled the ball in front of Dave who was just sitting on the floor.

"Yeah, they have nice grass." The goalkeeper said after feeling some of the grass with his right hand.

He watched Mateo joggle for a couple of minutes before he picked up his gloves and strapped them onto his hand.

"Let's go do the practice shots." He said before he got up and began to make his way to the goalpost.

"Okay," Mateo said before he kicked the ball up and caught it.

He waited for Dave to reach the goalpost before he dropped the ball right at the edge of the box.

"I'm not going to go easy this time." The winger said.

"Sure, whatever." The goalkeeper said with a shrug.

Mateo slowly took three steps away from the ball before he quickly closed up on it and sent it flying toward the top left-hand corner.

Dave got to it right on time and sent it over the bar with a punch from his right hand before crashing down to the floor.

FC Basel's first-choice goalkeeper Filip Marko had gone to have a drink on the sidelines and was now watching Mateo and Dave's practice from there, from the look on his face, he seemed to be quite impressed.

He seemed to be of the same height as Dave, but his body was quite muscular, he had black hair and a nice hairline, a pair of green eyes, a slightly convex nose, and slightly plump lips.

"I heard he's a spectacular goalkeeper, but I haven't even watched anything about him to see how true that is." He muttered.

"You should have tried to watch a couple of them."

The goalkeeper quickly turned around to see Alexander standing behind him with both of his hands in his pocket.

"You're their second-choice goalkeeper, right?" Filip asked after turning his gaze to the youngster.

"Yeah, and I see you were talking about Dave, there," Alexander said before pulling closer to him. "You know sometimes I wonder how he does the things he does."

"Huh?"

"He was arguably the worst goalkeeper in the league last season and this season, he hasn't conceded any goal in five matches." Alexander expressed.

"Isn't it supposed to be six matches?" Filip asked.

"Yeah, he was out with an ankle injury during one of those matches so I had to take over, I ended up conceding two goals and we lost the match," Alexander explained.

"Oh."

"Dave's an extraordinary goalkeeper and you'll see that in this match, you should also try watching a few of his lips, from this season, not last season," Alexander said before running off into the pitch.

Filip kept his gaze on him for a while before turning it back to what Dave and Mateo were doing.

"Dave Richards, huh." He muttered with a smile on his face.

Just thirty minutes before the kick-off, the players all made their way down the tunnel to get ready for the match.

For this match, Unique FC were going to be putting on their new away kit which was a lemon green kit with broken black stripes and the Web logo stylishly designed with orange, Dave's kit was black, and for the first time ever, they threw a little bit of orange in the shading, the orange shading made the black kit look brighter.

FC Basel, on the other hand, were putting on their normal home jersey which had red on the left and blue on the right, the left sleeve was blue and the right sleeve was red and the goalkeeper had to put on a green kit.

Once the players were set, the assistant coach walked in to say something.

"Hey, guys I think you guys should start heading out now." He said.

[ Score from your side before the seventy-fifth minute ]

'I have a quest to complete.' Dave said subconsciously before quickly getting up from where he was sitting.

****

Mass release goals.

A magic castle= one extra chapter.

Two magic castles= two extra chapters.