It took up to ten minutes for Emma to finish her interview with Mateo and by that time, Adolf and the rest of the team who were outside were in the locker room now, Norman was also in the locker room now.


    "I guess I should start leaving now." She said slowly getting up from the bench. "Thanks, Mateo."


    "No problem," Mateo said.


    She slowly turned to leave and had almost run into Ferran who was heading toward Mateo at that time.


    "Sorry." She said even though she didn''t run into him.


    "It''s okay," Ferran said. "Emma Smith right? Mateo''s big sister and Dave''s girlfriend."


    "Yeah, but I am here as a reporter, not his brother or his girlfriend." She said,


    "I know, I''m...."


    "I know who you are, what type of sports reporter would I be if I didn''t know who you were?" She said. "You''re Ferran Phil the midfield dynamo."


    "Umm..yeah," Ferran said with a nod. "I heard about what happened to youst week. How''s your shoulder?"


    "It''s okay, it''s healing just fine." She said,


    "Okay, that''s good news," Ferran said.


    "Yeah, I should get going now." She said before quickly making her way toward the exit.


    She turned and waved at Dave before leaving.


    With the match done and all the yers back in their locker room, it was now time for them to start heading back to Unique City.


    Securing a point against Spree meant they were just two points away from the conference league spot but there was a chance that Lesica United could either steer clear of them with three extra points or one extra point tonight as they were going to be facing Zilo FC.


    They were already clear of Troham United with two points after they lost their match against Junami Unitedst night.


    The yers, coaching staff, and the medical team made their way into the team''s ne and as soon as they were all on their seats with their seatbelts strapped around them, the ne took off.


    Mateo was busy going through his phone to find something that should have been updated after the match that had concluded about an hour ago.


    "Hey, look I''m fourth in the race for the league''s golden boot now," Mateo said after bringing up what he had been searching for.


    "Let me see," Dave said drawing closer to see.


    Rnd Hills was leading the race with a total of thirty goals, in second ce was Litno FC''s Zen with twenty-six goals, third ce was upied by a Dynamo FC yer, an attacking midfielder named Frank James with twenty-four goals while the fourth position was upied by Mateo with twenty-three goals.


    He was in the fifth position while Felix was in fourthing into the match that just ended but now Felix had dropped to the fifth position with twenty goals, and the rest of the yers below had less than twenty goals.


    "This race for the golden boot is quite tight," Ferran said from behind. "There''s a chance that you can win it."


    "I want to believe that but we only have four matches left and while I will be trying my best to score more goals during thosest four matches, these guys will also be doing the same thing," Mateo said.


    "I never said it was going to be easy but it can happen," Mateo said. "Do you mind checking the assist leaderboard?"


    "Sure," Mateo said before clicking the assist tab for the leaderboard to switch to that of assist.


    "Another ymaker award loading," Mateo said after seeing Ferran on top with fifteen assists.


    "Yeah, but Zen is hot on my trail," Ferran said with his gaze on the second-ced Zen who had twelve assists so far and while they were looking at it, the assists turned to thirteen.


    "Waooh," Mateo said with a shocked expression on his face. "He just gave an assist."


    "Like I said, he''s hot on my trail," Ferran said.


    "Then we have to make sure he doesn''t catch up."


    <I know it''s toote this season but next season is going to be the start of a new era>


    ''I hope so.'' Dave said subconsciously.


    It didn''t take long for them to arrive at the airport given the fact that the distance between Unique City and that side of Spree wasn''t that far.


    The yers got down from the ne and got on the bus which took them back to the Wondamino stadium where they picked up the rest of their stuff before heading back to their various rooms.


    The goalkeeper parked his car in his usual parking spot and got down from it before slowly making his way toward the door.


    He stopped in front of the door and was about to open it when he started hearing footsteps approaching him from behind and turned to see that it was who he thought it would be.


    "Hey," Emma said with a smile before she quickly got closer to him and wrapped her arms around him in a warm embrace.


    "It''s been a long day for both of us hasn''t it?" Dave said.


    "Yeah." She said, drawing her head back to look at his face.


    The two stared at each other for a few seconds before Dave broke out of the hug to open the door.


    "So how was your first day at work?" Dave asked moving toward the couch.


    "You saw for yourself." She said following him.


    "Yeah," Dave said before throwing his bag on the couch and crashing on it. "But I want to know how you felt about it."


    "It was nice." She said,


    "You see, sports reporting is nice." He said.


    "I never said it wasn''t."


    "Okay, so who was the other person that you could have chosen to interview instead of Mateo?"


    "You," Emma said.


    "Be serious Emma." He said.


    "I''m serious, it was you." She said, "You had the second-best rating in the match didn''t you?"


    "So you would have interviewed me if I had gotten the best rating?" Dave asked.


    "No."


    "Why not?"


    "Because I can get that exclusive with you anytime I wish to." She said,


    "Oh, that makes sense," Dave said with a nod.


    "Exactly." She said before pulling out her jotter from her pocket. "Now, I''m going to go upstairs and professionally organize this." She said before leaning closer to kiss him.


    "Okay," Dave said before she turned and quickly made her way upstairs.


    After about one minute after she had gone upstairs, he brought out his phone from his pocket to check some things.


    He scrolled through the Google News page and it didn''t take long before he found an article rting to the match that had just been concluded.


    "Dave Richards denies Felix Nunez from extending his goal record against him." He read out the title of the article.


    The article was short but reading it was really nice for him.


    He scrolled through the page and found a lot of articles talking about one thing or the other from the match.


    He skipped most of the articles until he found one which didn''t have anything to do with the match but it had something to do with a hot matching up tonight in Spain.


    "El sico." He muttered as he looked at the cover page of the article which had a picture of Ciro in Barcelona''s home kit lifting his hand in celebration and Fernandez who was in Real Madrid''s white jersey doing the same celebration.


    "Two hours to the El ssico," Dave muttered with an excited voice.


    ****


    Hope you enjoyed the chapter?


    If I get up to a hundred golden tickets before the end of the month I will release six chapters on the first of December.