The Captain's Duty

Though everyone was exhausted, no one spoke up.

For such an important match, no one wanted to miss out.

Unless they truly could not hold on any longer, they would grit their teeth and persevere until the very end.

"Since that's the case, let's go over our tactics for the second half..."

After the brief halftime break, the two sides switched ends and the match resumed.

It was now around three thirty in the afternoon in Johannesburg. The sun was slanting westward, no longer shining directly down into the stadium as before, but entering at an angle.

Blocked by the structure of the stadium, shadows appeared in the areas the sunlight could not reach.

As the sun's angle shifted, the shadows on the pitch continued to expand, gradually covering the Chinese team's penalty area and slowly spreading toward midfield.

This was a good thing for the Chinese team, because they had their backs to the sun and would not be overly affected.

Their opponents, however, were facing the sunlight, and their vision would be significantly impaired.

That was the downside of kicking off at noon, but in order to accommodate the more than one billion viewers in Asia—especially China—FIFA could only make this compromise.

After all, if they had really scheduled this match for two or three in the morning, wouldn't FIFA have been cursed to death by enraged Chinese supporters?

The fans would not even need to do anything. The sponsors alone would teach them a lesson!

Trailing on the scoreboard, the Portuguese National Team played very aggressively.

In the 46th minute, Pepe passed the ball, and Simao fired a long-range shot wide from the right.

Cristiano Ronaldo then had two shots from the edge of the penalty area blocked by the National Football Team goalkeeper.

Unlike the first