Chapter 717: The Situation Gets Worse?!

"OH! Finally!"

"Damn, that goalkeeper is so stubborn!"

"Let’s go, Leon! What a goal!"

Cheers exploded immediately the moment the goal was confirmed. While Leon Goretzka himself just raised both hands and didn’t show much expression to pay respect to his former team, the same couldn’t be said for the others, as they all came to him with a big grin on their face.

"Leon, you stole my goal!" Thomas Muller laughed while sharing a high-five with the midfielder. "We are the ones who work hard, so how could you appear out of nowhere to steal the spotlight?!" Even though he was complaining, everyone could see the man’s grin spread from ear to ear.

"Maybe, if your rebound didn’t suck, the goal would be yours." The midfielder just shrugged while throwing this little jab nonchalantly.

Not wanting to get left behind, Lewandowski, who had just been hugging them from behind, also joined in. "Yeah, Thomas. I have opened the door for you with that header against two defenders, so how could you fail to get that tap-in?" The Polish man also didn’t forget to send a light punch to his friend’s shoulder.

The other Bayern players around just chuckled when they heard that, especially when Thomas Muller showed a sour reaction at their jab. "Can you really blame me here? I mean, didn’t you see how good their goalkeeper is? He is like a fucking cheat code!"

For that, all of his teammates nodded in agreement, remembering how Higo fought tooth and nail to block all the shots earlier. Lewandowski, especially, respected Higo more for not backing down even though he basically fought alone against the most destructive offensive line in the world right now.

Unfortunately, the opponent’s respect didn’t dismiss the fact that Higo finally conceded a goal here. After having two clean sheets in a row, this was the first time he conceded a goal in his professional life, and while the boy expected this to happen, once it was really in front of him, he could still feel his breathing heavy, getting so frustrated over everything.

’Damn! That was so fucking close... Where the fuck are the others?!’ He murmured while also lying on the ground and covering his face, feeling like he was about to cry. ’Just one... I just need one player to react in time to help me... Why is it so difficult?!’ If it wasn’t in the middle of the game, the boy would wail in frustration.

Not that anyone could blame him here, since the goal itself was indeed ridiculous. If it was any normal goal, Higo would be able to accept that, as he never had any illusion that he would be invincible or something like that. He would concede a goal sooner or later, and the boy had already been prepared for that.

What he had never thought, though, was that the first goal he conceded would be coming from this scenario. Just suffering from one rebound shot was bad enough for the team’s defense, showing that they lost concentration and let someone sneak inside their own territory, and now this?

Two rebound shots in one sequence. Just how bad was Schalke’s defensive line?

The rest of the players with blue jerseys here just sighed helplessly, not even trying to console the boy. No, they were all too ashamed here, knowing that Higo had done everything he could before he got betrayed by them.

Unfortunately, the timing here was not Higo’s best friend. He couldn’t just wallow in self-pity right now, not when there were still 10 minutes left before the first half was over. That short period was definitely enough for a team like Bayern Munich to get the second or even third goal if their opponent failed to recover quickly.

After spending some moments in silence—and even getting reprimanded by the referee not to waste too much time—Higo finally got up, his cheek puffed red from his reaction earlier. He didn’t say anything else to his teammates, wanting to make everyone know that he was not pleased with their effort earlier.

He might be a talented goalkeeper, but at the end of the day, Higo was still just a young adult who had just graduated from high school last year. Holding a grudge was his specialty, and even without saying anything, he intended to show it to everyone else here.

FWEEE!

Soon enough, the game was restarted again, and this time, Schalke started it with a kickoff to the midfield. Now that they were down by one goal, even though no one dared to think that they could tie the score, they still had to show their attitude here.

Three to four players tried to occupy Bayern’s territory, playing around with the ball while also eyeing a chance to get closer to the opponent’s penalty box. Unfortunately, the combination of David Alaba and Jerome Boateng in the center back played a strong part in repelling everything away from their territory.

If anything, this attempt was like the act that opened the floodgates, inviting disaster to come straight to their own side.

With Schalke players trying to push forward, this left a gap in so many places in the middle, and that was what Bayern was waiting for. Hell, they didn’t even need to wait for the opponent to rush the majority of their players forward to launch a quick counterattack and overwhelm the opponent with numbers. No, as long as Schalke players didn’t stay like a cocoon in their own area, that was still enough for them.

In the 43rd minute of the game, Thomas Muller suddenly made a diagonal run to enter the channel space inside the box. This caught Hofmann off guard, and when he saw a long pass was sent straight above him to the space where Muller would run to, the boy couldn’t help but curse.

’Fuck! This is bad!’

He tried to put pressure on the opponent, but unfortunately, while Muller was never a player who used his speed to win the duel, the man was still quite strong to hold his own ground against Hofmann. Hell, the defensive midfielder was so frustrated that he couldn’t get an advantage here that he raised his hand unconsciously, and right after that...

FWEEE!