**Monday, 5th December 2017***
On this day, Vincent was the first person to arrive at the training grounds as early as 7am. Usually he wasn't late, he was all ways among the first ten players to arrive but today was his first official training session as a PRO, which made it special for him.
As usual he began warming up as more players arrived and joined him while laughing and congratulating him privately. By 8am the club's head coach and manager, Albert Stuivenberg and assistant coaches also arrived to the scene.
"Alright everyone, huddle up!" Coach Cossey announced.
"Good morning everyone. Firstly let's welcome Vincent officially into the team. While he has indeed been with us for about a year now, he been a partner, now he is a brother.... your brother-in-arms. For your duration together you shall work together, rejoice together, fight together as a team and family for the best interest of the club." Albert stated giving his motivational a little bit overly passionate.
Coach Cossey then took over giving them training drills to follow before the have their tactical meeting by 1pm. The club's training session to prepare for the match against Charleroi tomorrow.
Vincent and the others began with passing drills for 30mins then 1 hour fitness training then a 20 minutes break. By 10:00 am they began practicing shooting drills from varying distances for an hour then ball control drills, the players will receive crosses from both long and short distances from their teammates for 30 mins then they began practicing defensive drills focused more on the defenders and midfielders.
When they finished practising the defensive drills, coach Cossey immediately began drilling them on positioning and tactical understanding as this was a necessity before every match.
The assistant coach, busy with tasks, remarked: "Mr. Albert, I think Vincent is improving steadily, but i don't know if he has a chance to play when the half season starts."
Albert nodded approvingly, and said: "Yes, indeed he is a serious player and he's improving quite fast, but some of his skills are still subpar, which is because he has not experienced systematic youth training,"
"Look at his state today, while he good enough to play he lacks the experience and his game sense is still developing, for now he can only act as a substitute. Moreover, he's young and the physicality of a real game might be too intense for him now." He continued.
By 1:30pm they entered the conference room to prepare for tactical explanations from the coach concerning tomorrow's matchup. They spent about 1 hour discussing and explaining the arrangements for tomorrow's game.
At this time, Head Coach Albert clapped his hands and signalled the end of the meeting. He then divided the players into two groups, the main team, and the substitute team, for a group confrontation as usual using the tactics and formation explained earlier on.
Normally, Vincent would be a substitute in this scenario, waiting for his turn to enter the game after a few minutes. However, this time, the coach asked him to start at the beginning.
Training ended 2:1 with team A winning. Vincent provided only one assist to Trossard who scored with a deft one touch which prevented the match ending at two nil. Vincent was still adapting to playing in the given positions and following the play style but was still playing fine.
By 4pm, they headed for the locker room having just finished the tough training session.
Vincent sat on a bench in a corner of the room relaxing while pondering on the training session they just had when suddenly Bryan calls out to him.
"Vincent, can you come help me with something over here?" He said grinning mischievously.
"Uhh, sure, what is it?" Vincent said looking up confused.
Walking over, he failed to notice the look of expectation on his teammates face. As he headed over, Timothy quickly swapped his bottle filled with water with Sebastien's bottle filled with protein shake.
Vincent, still not weird giggling of Bogani or Trossard, grabs his bottle to take a drink-only to spit out the drink in a choked expression.
"What the hell?!" Vincent exclaims spitting out the shake.
The whole locker room immediately bursts into laughter, with Vincent's expression making matters worse, Bogani started crying from laughter, as Vincent finally realized he had been pranked.
"Come on, dude, you should have known better! We've doing this for months now. You're so slow dude!" Bryan said mockingly.
"Yeah, we all got your vid on camera. Hahaha, dude you're gonna go viral when we post it," Timothy said.
"I'll get you back for this," Vincent said chuckling.
"Sure, try your best Vincent. We'll be waiting and watching for your next move." Sebastien said teasing Vincent.
"Alright everyone nice training. Make sure to get well rested for tomorrow's match, as we'll be heading for Charleroi early tomorrow. Have a good night boys." Albert said leaving the locker room.
*****
By 5pm, Vincent got back to his apartment and started unwinding. After having his shower, he made dinner for two and sat at the dinning table scrolling through his phone with had been switched off during training.
Checking the team chat group, he saw the video of himself posted there which he also found quite funny.
[Hmmmm.... these guys truly are a crazy lot.] Vincent thought to himself.
After ranting on the group, he called his mom to check up on her and Selena. Though his mom was just 45 years old, she has been weathered by work and stress over the past five years since Vincent's father died.
"Mom, I'll be sending you £10k per month from now on. You don't have to work any more, also try to save the some money for yourself. When I settle fully over here, I'll buy a house for you so you can move over here," Vincent said to his mom.
"Alright. Make sure you come back for Christmas this year or even earlier if you can, we miss you," His mom said.
"I miss you to mom. Take care of yourselves ok?" Vincent said.
"Yes baby, we will. Alright have some rest, bye." His mom said lovingly.
"Byeeee." Vincent ending the call contentedly.
[Time to get some rest and me time.]. Vincent said to himself.