36 Unexpected Changes

Jason fell onto his bed, his muscles aching slightly from exhaustion, but his mind was filled with excitement after getting to play in today's match.

To be fair, he hadn't expected to have that much of an influence on the game, but after getting his first goal from the corner, he had felt like he was on fire and he made sure to make the best use of the opportunities that he had.

Of course, the fact that this was a youth league and that the Familicao U19 team was much weaker than his side aided their victory and enabled them to rack up such an extravagant score, but the fact that the opportunities kept coming and that their team kept taking them remained a fact that he couldn't deny.

"Well, it all worked out in the end," he murmured, his mind already moving past that and going back to something he remembered after seeing something on his phone while he and Mylo were on their way back after the game.

The current year was the year 2020 and was also the year he had returned to the past from his past reality so this year was the last year worth of future knowledge that he had, but what worried him was not that he would soon run out of future knowledge as he hadn't really need it much anyway…

Rather it was about the worldwide pandemic that had taken the world by storm in the year 2020, Corona Virus.

The virus was not especially fatal, but it was extremely contagious and that caused it to rack up kills and prompt the world into taking severe actions to curb its spread to other parts of the world.

This caused a lockdown of literally every country and almost everything in the world had to come to a pause, but thanks to the advancement of technology, humanity didn't suffer much of an effect from the sudden halt in everything.

He had just seen some news about the outbreak in China and he had already realized that it was only a matter of time before it spread to other parts of the world and the Covid lockdown began.

As a "returnee", he knew the best ways to avoid the virus and ensure that he was not infected, yet he was still worried because of something else.

In his past reality, due to the lockdown, many businesses suffered huge losses and these businesses involved football clubs.

Due to no income coming in from the fans, the clubs could not afford to pay the exorbitant amount of players' salaries and a lot of football clubs had to introduce pay cuts and postponement of salaries.

A lot of football clubs even went into debt because of the aftereffects of the lockdown and had to release players from contracts and do all sorts of things because they couldn't afford the players.

Jason's problem wasn't that he would have to deal with a pay cut, but rather the fact that he didn't even have a professional contract yet.

If he didn't have a professional contract by the time the lockdown began, the chances of him getting the contract after the lockdown would be lower than ever since the club would prioritize their more experienced and longstanding players rather than a "fresh meat" from the junior team… or older, washed up players who they thought had no more business playing professional football.

He knew and was very sure of this because the aftereffects of the lockdown were a leading cause of his retirement in his previous reality.

He had been called a washed-up player and his contract had not been extended no matter how much he was willing to concede when it came to his salary, so he had chosen to retire as he was already too old to keep his hopes up for another team to come calling.

It had hurt him a lot back then as he thought he was at the end of his dream, but luckily he had gotten another chance and he was determined not to have any sudden flaws in his path.

Jason psyched himself up and stood up from his bed to do a few yoga routines to help with muscle exhaustion.

He made up his mind to do his best in training and the upcoming youth matches so that the club management would not have a choice but to offer him a professional contract to the senior team, after all, no matter how well he played, he couldn't join the senior team after only one match in the youth league, right?

Those were his thoughts when his phone suddenly rang, interrupting his yoga practice and he stood up out of his pose to pick up the phone.

"Why is Rafael calling?" he wondered as the phone's screen came into view, before swiping across the screen and putting the phone to his ear.

"Hello?" he spoke in a questioning tone.

"Have you been able to get an agent?" Rafael's voice rang into his ear.

"Huh? Uh, no, I haven't gotten one yet," Jason responded, a bit confused at the sudden question that even sounded a bit urgent.

"Well, find one quick, the club management was impressed by your performance and wants to have a conversation with you about getting on the senior team rooster," Rafael dropped the sudden bomb.

Despite not directly saying it, Jason immediately understood that the club wanted to offer him a professional contract and words were not enough to describe his surprise at the early and unexpected decision by the club to add him to the senior team.

This was more than shocking as this was not something that would normally be done in any professional football team, after all, it had been barely a week ago that he had not even been part of a football academy and now he was suddenly offered a professional contract, and into the senior team of a top-flight team in Europe no less.

"Uh… ok, thank you very much," Jason was beyond stunned at how things were falling into place so easily but not questioning anything as things were already going in a better direction than he expected.

"The club wants an agreement as soon as possible, so as soon as you get an agent to help handle the proceedings, you can get back to me," Rafael continued speaking, not yet done delivering his message.

"Preferably within the next few days, as it's best if both sides can come to a mutual agreement before the end of the transfer season," 

"Ok, I'll get back to you soon, and thank you again," Jason finally said as it seemed that Rafael was done speaking.

"You're welcome, I'm simply doing my job," Rafael replied and hung up the call.