Accidental Miracle |Erling Haaland|

34

A/n: This one is kinda long, sorry for the delay🫶🏽

——————

This is it, the day we've been training months for. We're on the way to the stadium at the moment and we watch as Barcelona fans chant, letting off red and purple clouds from the smoke grenades.

I put my headphones on to drown out the sound of the Barcelona fans that line the streets as a look down at them as they lined the streets virtually the whole way to the stadium.

The team bus soon came to a halt and I looked out the window. We were here.

I paused my music and I could already feel the tense pressure and I hadn't even gotten off of the bus yet.

We were met by a small minority of our fans at our entrance, as I got off I had my eyes set on just getting inside to be honest because I was feeling quite nervous but out of the corner of my eye I saw a girl with a piece of cardboard in her hand that read 'Good luck Astrid' in Norwegian. I instantly stopped walking and turn the opposite way to walk towards her and she began to cry.

"Oh no don't cry..." I  leaned over to give her a small hug.
"Du liker hennes største idol," (You're like her biggest idol,) her mum smiles.
"No way! If you come to find me after the match, I'll give you my shirt," I tell her and she looks up at me.

"Really?" She sniffs as I pat her hair down.
"Hold up, lemme get a picture with you and don't forget the sign." She budges up next to me holding the piece of cardboard as her mum takes the picture.
"There you go! I'll see you after the match," I hug her one more time.
"Tusen takk Astrid," (Thank you so much, Astrid,) She beams unable to control her excitement.
"No problem, see you," I wave finding my teammates that's had also stopped to talk to fans so we can walk inside. We watched as the photographers snap m. M m. Love photos of us entering the stadium.

It wasn't hard to find where our changing room was because we could already hear the music blasting so we just followed the music.

I had to go straight in and get changed because I spent like 10 minutes out there which left me little time to get changed for the warm-up Ihnomon the pitch.

I took the team tracksuit off and put on the drill shirt and shorts. Last week I went to design the boots that I'd be wearing for the match in particular and when I looked down in the boot compartment they were exactly there how I'd pictured them to be.

"Ohh they're so nice, you weren't kidding!" Chloe noticed me putting them on.
"Yeah, I spent like 4 hours in Stockport last week customising them," I tell her.
"Wow they got it done quick," she says in shock.
"To be honest I was worried they weren't gonna get it done in time at one point," I told her and she began to chuckle.
"Well judging that we're now the only ones here, I think we should get going," Chloe realises so I finish tying up my boots and follow her out the door.

As we stepped out from the dugout, we saw the stadium begin to fill up with fans filling the vacant seats by the second.

I just stayed in a circle doing rondos with a couple of the girls before going back into the changing rooms to have our pre-match talk with our manager Gareth Taylor before we go back out onto the pitch.

It didn't take me long to get dressed so I spent most of the time sat thinking about how I wanted this match to turn out.

Once we were all dressed, Gareth entered the room holding a notepad.

"Right, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet because we haven't got huge amounts of time," He began, "Today will forever be remembered for not only being one of the most significant games in women's football history but it'll also be the day we will either smile to look back on, or it may very well be the opposite but however today turns out to be, I want you to walk out there and play your fucking best 90 minutes you've ever played because this is the moment that'll sum up your career so far, yeah?" He begins to clap his hands and we all join in.
"C'MONN WE'VE GOT THIS!" I start to encourage the girls as we head to the tunnel.