八字万年历

Chapter 450: Live Interview I

*9:48 a.m*

“Move the light over there,” a man holding a notepad said to someone holding up a standing light.

“Yes, sir,” the guy holding the light responded, going to put the light down in the direction that his boss had pointed out.

It was an early morning at the Continassa after the Uventus team’s win against Inter Milan at Milan and the players were not even back yet at Turin after the match, but at the media building, preparations for a shoot was taking place.

It was meant to be an interview for Jason who was a new member of the club and should have been done earlier, but due to the match, it had been postponed till now and after Jason’s performance in the previous match which had won over most of the Uventus fans, the club had decided to invest more into the interview.

That was the reason for the slightly more lavish than normal set-up for the interview, but Jason who was to be in the interview didn’t know of the changes.

He was still on the bus heading back to Turin and already feeling mentally tired that he would have to face off against an interview instead of getting some rest after the previous day’s match.

It wasn’t that he was too tired which wasn’t possible as he hadn’t even been on the field for a third of an hour, but he wanted to quickly get to recovering from the match’s fatigue so he could delve back into training.

His new playing style had shown it’s effectiveness and he wanted to get to work perfecting it, but instead had to do an interview instead.

‘They should have just let me talk to the reporters yesterday,’ Jason murmured inwardly, remembering that the club staff had prevented him from talking to any reporters despite his performance in the match the previous day.

While it was a bit far off from a man-of-the-match performance when compared against the others on the pitch, for a new player, it was a very good performance and the reporters had been itching to interview him, but he had been shielded from all interviews because the club wanted his first interview in Italy to be self-hosted for some reason.

Not that it mattered much to Jason for the time being.

About an hour later, the bus was already cruising the streets of Turin and making its way to the Continassa.

It didn’t take long for the players to arrive at the Continassa and the players quickly deboarded with the aid of club staff.

The club’s next match was in two days and the players needed to focus on recovery so that they could be ready for the upcoming match which was the Italy Super Cup finals against Napoli.

The players had already begun their recovery process back at Milan the night before by using ice baths to reduce muscle soreness and inflammation and doing some gentle exercises and stretching to reduce heart rate and body temperature, but for players of their level, that was the barest minumum and as soon as they arrived at the continassa, they were almost dragged away to continue their recovery.

Nutritional foods and massages were the next in line on the recovery process, as well as a few light exercises like cycling and swimming under the watchful eyes of the trainers to ensure that the players didn’t stress themselves any further.

Despite having a scheduled interview, Jason wasn’t subtracted from the recovery session.

After his showing in the previous match, it was clear that he would probably be a big part of the team’s plans in the coming weeks so they could not afford any injuries due to negligence of a recovery period.

When the recovery session was over, some of the players began leaving while Jason was whisked away to the media building where he was first subjected to the care of the the cosmetics and dressing staff, but before long, it became apparent that they didn’t need to bother too much on Jason’s appearance which was the least worrisome thing about him in the interview.

It was only after Jason was seated in the stool-like chair with lights on him that he heard that the interview would be live.

‘Fu*k, I should have known when they were doing too much,’ Jason wanted to cry inwardly as he knew what a live interview meant.

Any blunders he made couldn’t be erased and would be broadcasted to whoever was watching.

The problem was that after the Covid-19 lockdown period, the club had become more media conscious and would be broadcasting the interview live on not just TV, but also on the club’s apps as well as on some of their social media accounts.

One blunder and Jason would turn from the embarrasser to the embarrassee.

And they were just telling him that a few minutes to the time for the interview going live.

At this point, Jason was wondering why they were doing this much for a player who had merely joined the club on loan.

‘Is this normal?’ Jason could not help asking himself, but there was no one to answer his thoughts other than him and he didn’t know the answer.

In the end, he didn’t have much of a choice but to watch the arrangements for the interview continue and listen to the things he should take note of for the interview.

The person who would be hosting the interview was someone Jason had never seen nor heard of before, but apparently that didn’t matter as the focus of the interview was supposed to be on Jason and was directed towards making him closer to the fans.

Something about making him an open book so that the fans could become further endeared to him and at some point, Jason started wondering the kinds of question they would be asking, but after a while he stopped paying attention to that part as well.

In the end, he listened half-heartedly until everywhere suddenly became quiet and he heard,

“And we are live in 3, 2, 1…”