Over the next few days, Velarde continued his serious, hard-working approach to training and brought Dalia and Bonifacio along for extra workouts every morning and evening.
August 16 and 17, the second round of the A B match day, because A, B two groups are 11 teams, so each round has a team to rotate, the Hurricanes just happened to be the second round of the rotation, Mario Binko is very humane to give the players two days off.
Instead of resting, Velarde pulled Dahlia and Bonnie Fashaw into extra training on their own. Although the effect of these two days of self-additional training was not as good as the team training, the training rating was only B, and the experience was only 3,000, but it was better than nothing.
After this round of the league, Hurricanes Athletic, who had their turn in this round, dropped to fourth place in the rankings. But even so, it's still within the top five promotion spots, which shows how good the chances are for promotion this season.
On Monday, August 18, Velarde spent another 13 skill points to add defense to 73, physical fitness to 77, awareness to 80, speed to 63, headers to 58, and technique to 55, leaving a balance of 39 skill points.
According to the system rules, Villard's club is now in the A.B. League level, the skill attribute can only be increased to 80 at most, and his "awareness" has already reached the top.
To add higher attributes, one could only wait until the Hurricane Athletic Team was promoted to the A-League. Otherwise, it was useless to have more skill points.
Nonetheless, a whopping 80 awareness is a rare enough presence in League Two, and in terms of defense and especially teamwork, Velarde has been quite good.
Combined with various other skill enhancements, Villard's rate of improvement in practice has been jaw-dropping for the coaching staff and his teammates.
But Velarde, whether training or extra training, are quite hard working, everyone can only attribute this to Velarde's serious efforts, think he is a late bloomer, hard work out of the miracle, did not think of the other.
Two days later, Velarde's total experience reached level 10, 201,000/200,000, and automatically upgraded to level 11, 0.1 million/300,000, earning an upgrade bonus of 20 skill points, with the balance rising to 59.
As it turns out, leveling up 1-10 is rewarded with 10 skill points, leveling up 11-20 is rewarded with 20 skill points, and each subsequent stage rewards more and more skill points.
On Saturday, Hurricanes Athletic were away to Salmihandu in the third round of the A.B. Velarde was automatically suspended for one game due to a red card, but he traveled to the away game with the players who were not on the roster to cheer on his teammates from the stands.
It was still a double start for Federico Bismarra and Lucas Villarruel, with fourth back Rolon getting a chance to get into the starting lineup, but Bismarra and Lucas both played the full game, and Rolon didn't get a chance to come off the bench.
The Hurricanes also failed to win the game, exchanging points with Salmihandu, and are still fourth in the standings.
The next day, the team had the day off, but Velarde didn't have extra practice on his own either, because Kristina called and asked Velarde to play at school.
This time, Velarde got to know one more of her sister's classmates, as well as the last roommate of their dormitory, Lorelle Molly. However, she would not be as pretty as the trio of Kristina, Alyssa, and Bertha, and the person was a little bit arrogant looking, seemingly looking down on Velarde, who was only playing on the bench in the second division team.
Velarde was fine with that, and after accompanying a few people around the university for the day, he returned to the town of Devoto to continue his training routine.
On Monday, August 25th, Velarde spent 10 skill points to add defense to 74, fitness to 78, speed to 64, headers to 59, and technique to 56, leaving a skill point balance of 49.
With 80 awareness, 78 size, 74 defensive ability, and increasing speed, Velarde is getting better and better, even better than Federico Bismara, in his daily workouts.
Unfortunately, limited to a ban, Velarde is still unable to play.
In the fourth round of the A.B. on August 29, Velarde continued to sit in the stands and watch the game because of an additional ban, while Hurricanes Athletic suffered a surprising 0-1 loss to Patronato, dropping one place in the standings to 5th, and is about to fall out of the promotion zone just because of a better goal differential than the two opponents behind them on the same number of points.
The home loss made Mario Binko extremely angry, and he simply canceled his scheduled vacation the next day and let everyone train as usual.
The teammates were quite depressed, but they didn't dare to show it in front of the head coach, it would be bad luck. However, Velarde didn't have any problem with it, he couldn't wait to train intensively in the base every day, that way he would have the 5000 experience of an A-rated evaluation in one day, instead of the 3000 experience of a B-rated training on his own.
On Monday, September 1, Velarde spent another 10 skill points to add defense to 75, fitness to 79, speed to 65, headers to 60, and technique to 57, leaving him with a balance of 39 skill points.
The next day, Tuesday, in the 5th round of the A-League, Hurricanes Athletic were away to Spodevo Belgrano, and Velarde continued to sit in the stands with his ban. However, this was the last game of his additional ban, and he would be available for the next game.
The Hurricanes played better in this game than in the previous round, scoring first, but unfortunately couldn't keep the lead until the end of the final period, and were leveled by a goal in the second half.
In the end, the two sides played to a 1-1 draw, and with only one point, Hurricanes Athletic has dropped to 7th place in the table, falling out of the promotion zone, causing some fans to be upset, flooding into the club's official website and leaving a few curses, not the least of which was a message to tell Mario Binko to get out of his job and get lost.
However, the league has only just begun its 5th round, so naturally the club can't let Mario Binko go. Not to mention, with a cold 2-0 away defeat to Boca Juniors in the Copa Argentina still on the horizon, the club is still willing to continue to give Binko time.
But Mario Binko, himself, has gotten a little nervous and is starting to look for a change.
Alan Velarde, the wonderkid Mario Binko had in mind.
Over time, Velarde's 80 awareness, 79 physique, 75 defensive prowess, and speed that has added up to 65, have shown in training to be far more capable than Federico Bismarra, even to the extent of an A-League defensive star.
Combined with the fact that Bismara was older and had played back-to-back games, the last two of which had been relatively short intervals apart, when Mario Binko announced the roster for the next day's game after practice on Sept. 5, Alan Velarde, who was coming off of a suspension, went into the starting lineup as the single back, with Bismara as a substitute.
Lucas Villarruel continued to start, playing center forward, and was pretty lucky.
After Velarde's name appeared in the starting lineup and Bismara became a substitute, teammates looked at Velarde a little differently.
While Velarde's recent rate of improvement, almost visible to the naked eye, had given everyone a premonition that he would one day take Federico Bismara's place, when that day actually came, everyone was still in a bit of a trance.
After all, Velarde was only the team's fifth back last season, making just two substitute appearances and less than 20 minutes combined throughout the season. As it turns out, a little over a month into the new season, he's already replaced starting back Federico Bismara in the starting lineup for the league.
Though there are reasons why the coach took into account Bismarck's back-to-back starts and gave him a break, as well as the team's three-game winless streak and the head coach's search for a change.
But if Villard does take his chance and puts in a great performance in this game, it's possible that this starting position at the back will be completely secured by Villard.
Many of the players looked at Velarde and Bismara in a way that revealed a hint of alienation.
Even Velarde's close friends, Dalia and Bonnie Fashaw, felt the weirdness of the team's atmosphere at this point and didn't dare to take the initiative to speak out and congratulate Velarde.
Federico Bismara is a veteran of the team with a lot of diehards, and now that Velarde has taken his place, there's no guarantee that he won't be met with hostility from some of his teammates.
This is the reason why some teams have a decorated veteran who is clearly no longer capable of handling the starting demands, yet the manager still has to start him. Those star players, not only involve the issue of factional fighting in the locker room, but also the emotional factor of the media, fans, and club executives.
If the head coach kicks a decorated star veteran out of the starting lineup and ends up not winning the game, he's bound to be the target of vocal criticism from the media and fans.
Luckily, Bismarck, who is over 30 years old, is a bit more open-minded himself and took the initiative to find Velarde after the announcement of the roster and dismissal, hugging him to congratulate him and hoping that he would put up the same kind of performance as he did in training and help the team to win.
After three rounds without a win, Hurricanes Athletic, who have dropped to the lower reaches of the table, must win this game. Even if the opponent is Tucuman Athletic, who is ranked first and has remained undefeated since the start of the new season, the Hurricanes must fight for the win. Otherwise, promotion to the first division may have to become a joke.
Federico Bismara's proactive release of goodwill prevented the team from locker room infighting, and other teammates have followed Bismara's lead in sending congratulations to Velarde and looking forward to playing alongside him in the game to help the team win.
Velarde didn't feel anything special.
Whether Federico Bismara is happy about it or not, having the system plug-in in place to improve a little bit every week, he's going to make the starting roster eventually and take the starting spot and not let it go.
On the soccer field, it's ultimately about strength. Otherwise, the coaching staff wouldn't have risked offending Bismara by putting Velarde in the starting lineup and leaving Bismara on the bench.
It's because Villard has shown in practice that he's not a point above Bismarck already on defense.
With that level of defense, it would be a waste to continue to press Velarde on the bench, and to go against their own promotion performance.
If the team was doing well it would be justifiable, but now that the team is clearly not doing well, Mario Binko can't be bothered with what Bismara and his friends think, and it's all about improving results first and foremost. Otherwise, he is going to have to step down if he doesn't get promoted.