Hazard (Ultimate Football Heroes)--Collect Them All! by Matt Oldfield

Author:Matt Oldfield [Matt and Tom Oldfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786068903
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

LEARNING LESSONS II

‘Take it easy, Eden,’ Natacha said as he slammed the car door. She couldn’t take another journey in angry silence. ‘It was just a bad day – get your head up and move on to the next game.’

‘I’m having a lot of bad days at the moment,’ Eden muttered. ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

His big plans for the new season weren’t going well. He wasn’t scoring goals and he wasn’t feeling his normal energetic self. Expectations were so high and for the first time ever, he was having a few doubts about his talent. Lille manager Rudi García had even moved him to the bench.

‘It’s only for a couple of weeks,’ Garcia told him in his office. He knew how badly Eden would take the news. ‘You need a bit of time to breathe and to think about your game. At the moment, you’re not playing well enough but you’ll be back, I’m sure of it.’

Eden couldn’t believe it. He knew he was in poor form but Lille needed him. How could the team win the league without him? Unfortunately, they seemed to be doing pretty well with him not there. They were unbeaten, with Gervinho and new signing Moussa Sow scoring goals for fun. Eden was meant to be the star player, not a substitute.

‘Stay calm,’ Yohan said when Eden came round to play FIFA. He had never seen his teammate look so upset. ‘You’ll be back in the team in no time and you’ll forget this bad spell ever happened.’

Eden was also struggling to make the first team for the Belgian national side. They were in a very difficult Euro 2012 qualification group with Germany and Turkey, and Eden was exactly the kind of skilful attacker they needed. However, the coach Georges Leekens didn’t like his attitude, and for their game against Kazakhstan, Eden wasn’t even on the bench.

‘You need to work harder,’ Leekens told his young star when he asked for an explanation. ‘No-one can question your skills but right now, you’re not showing the character that we’re looking for. We need fighters out on the pitch but you don’t seem to care enough. It’s not just us; Lille aren’t happy with you either.’

The criticism hurt but Eden could see that he needed to do better if he wanted to play regularly for both club and country. With people like Zidane talking about him, it was all too easy to relax and lose the focus that had got him there in the first place.

‘Perhaps he was right that I am sometimes quite lazy in training,’ he admitted to his dad once he had thought about it. ‘But you know how much I hate training.’

Thierry knew that this was a moment where he had to be tough with his son. ‘That’s no excuse. You have faith in your ability and so do I but you have to make sure that your coaches have faith too. You have to prove yourself on the training pitch every day.

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