God Of football Chapter 1036: Refusing Greatness!

Izan set the ball down as the referee measured the distance for the wall to be assembled.

When he was done, Muslera began barking out his instructions, trying his utmost to block even the light from penetrating his wall.

All while this happened, the Akron had gone strangely quiet.

And in the middle of it all, Izan slowly began taking steps backwards.

Never taking his eyes off the goal.

Muslera, just beyond the wall, bent his knees a bit, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet as he peered around shoulders, trying to keep the ball in sight.

And that was easier said than done.

On his second step towards the ball, Izan suddenly bolted towards the ball, like he’d forgotten all about technique.

At the last second, his body opened naturally, his back leaning more into the kick before his left foot wrapped itself around the ball.

Instead of what the run-up had suggested, the strike carried surprisingly little violence.

It almost felt like Izan hadn’t touched the ball but rather caressed it into moving.

The ball lifted over the wall almost lazily before beginning to drift.

Then, as it covered more ground, the ball began to bend, then curl with a conviction that didn’t seem possible.

Every yard it travelled, it found another degree of angle, another impossible line toward the top corner.

"Oh... look at this..." Drury breathed, unable to follow.

Like a sitting duck in his own goal, Muslera took his first step, then another as the ball came teasingly slow at him, bending out of reach every split second.

Despite doing his possible best, he knew it was inevitable.

To that, his heart dropped.

he thought as his mind raced ahead of his body.

For the briefest instant, it was like he could see the headlines after that goal.

It was like he could see the entire country watching that ball disappear into the top corner.

With all these thoughts crashing into him, instinct drowned everything else uncharacteristically.

Suddenly, he found himself a blank slate with no thoughts, or maybe just one.

And that was to save the ball!

He pushed, harder than he thought he still could.

His body stretched beyond what felt comfortable, fingertips reaching through empty air until, impossibly...

He felt something.......

"Leather," he muttered imperceptible to himself as his glove brushed the ball.

Brush was a strong word in actuality because to Muslera, it felt like the most he’d done was graze the air beside the ball, but suddenly, he found that enough.

The touch lifted it just a fraction higher before it crashed into the underside of the crossbar, and that crack echoed around the stadium.

The ball shot straight back down, striking the white goal line before spinning out into the six-yard box.

For a heartbeat nobody moved.

Then José María Giménez arrived like a man throwing himself in front of a train.

His leg stabbed through the loose ball, clearing it thirty yards upfield before any red shirt could react.

And the silence that followed was resounding, before disbelief crashed into the forms of all in the stadium.

"Jesus Christ..." Drury whispered.

"That has lifted the rigging... What... what a save."

Beside him, his co-commentator couldn’t do anything other than chuckle.

Because he genuinely didn’t know what else to do.

"I don’t think Muslera believed he was getting there either."

Back on the pitch, the players in blue swarmed their goalkeeper with Araujo reaching him first, grabbing both sides of his head before shouting something unintelligible into his face.

Valverde crashed into the celebration next, then Bentancur.

Within seconds, the entire Uruguayan defence had surrounded their saviour between the posts as though he’d just scored the winner himself.

Standing twenty-five yards away, Izan hadn’t moved.

His eyes remained fixed on the goal, the crossbar and on the patch of grass where the ball had bounced before escaping.

It had been right.

He knew it, but somehow it hadn’t entered the net.

With a glance, Izan’s gaze found the top of Muslera’s head, but unlike Araujo, what he expected wasn’t there.

Back in the gantry, Moreau watched the replay appearing on the monitor above them and slowly shook his head.

"I’ve covered this boy for years now," he said as another angle of the replay rolled.

"Peter... I genuinely think that’s the first free kick I’ve seen Izan Hernandez Miura strike toward goal and not score from that sort of position."

]

"And what makes it remarkable," Drury replied, still watching the slow-motion replay, "is that there is almost nothing wrong with the execution.

Sometimes you simply have to acknowledge greatness at both ends. Izan did almost everything right."

"And Muslera," Moreau answered quietly, "found the only answer available."

Thousands of kilometres away, in an office whose windows looked out over another city entirely, a man leaned back in his chair until something clicked pleasantly in his neck.

He rubbed at his eyes.

"National team playing..."

He glanced at the stack of paperwork beside him.

"...and I’m in here."

With a sigh, he reached for his phone.

"They should’ve scored by now."

Spain against anybody usually meant goal notifications before halftime, sometimes loads of them.

He opened his scores app and instantly, his thumb stopped.

Spain 0-0 Uruguay.

Thirty-nine minutes.

"What the hell?" he muttered as he kept scrolling through.

"Is Izan not playing?" he muttered as he tapped the match banner, and then the line-ups.

Instantly, he did so, his eyes found Izan Hernandez Miura right in the lineups and not on the bench.

"So he’s playing....... Wait, what the hell?"

That one came out louder because, as he looked at the ratings of his national team, he found Muslera sitting on a 9.1 match rating.

And Ronald Araujo... a 9.2.

Both higher than Izan’s 8.7.

"What on earth are those two doing in the stadium to be having these numbers?"