The mornings here are colder now. The air in Graubünden has that thin, alpine sharpness that catches in your lungs and reminds you summer has gone. From the balcony, I can see the first touches of snow on the higher peaks above the town. They look distant, untouchable, almost holy.

It’s been two months since Iker’s funeral and the days have settled into a rhythm that feels both comforting and hollow. I wake early, make breakfast for Xabier, walk down to the bakery, sit by the river for a while. Chur moves at its own quiet pace. People greet you softly here, with eyes that say they’ve known hardship too. Grief has a strange way of softening everything. I still hear my brother’s voice in small, ordinary moments. In the sound of boots on gravel. In the laughter of children playing football on the cobbled square. It never announces itself loudly, it just arrives, sits beside me for a while, and then disappears again. I’ve stopped fighting it.

I had just finished clearing the breakfast table this morning when the phone rang. The number on the screen was unfamiliar. For a moment, I thought it might be a doctor or someone from the local council, but when I answered, the voice on the other end surprised me.

“Señor Arriola? Guten Morgen. This is Marc Jaggi. I’m the president of FC Chur.”

The words took a second to land. Chur. Of course. I’ve seen their games at the old Sportanlage Obere Au – small crowds, fifth tier, raw football, honest football. A team that breathes the same mountain air as its supporters. Marc spoke with that measured Swiss clarity – direct but kind. He told me he knew why I was in town, that he understood I wasn’t here for football right now. “But,” he said, “sometimes life brings things to you when you least expect it.” He didn’t try to sell me anything. No promises of promotion, no talk of budgets or targets. Just honesty. He said he’d followed my work at Gernika, that he’d read about the way I spoke of football as something cultural, something more than results. Then he said something that froze me in place.

“We don’t want a manager. We want a builder. Someone to give this club a soul again. Control will be yours – structure, philosophy, everything. Think of it as a canvas.”

A canvas.

For a few seconds I didn’t answer. I just listened to the sound of his breathing through the line, steady and patient. He wasn’t rushing me. He knew this wasn’t an easy conversation for me to have.

He told me about the club’s struggles, about how the supporters had drifted, how the young players were leaving for Zürich or St. Gallen because they saw no future here. He spoke about how he wanted to reconnect Chur’s football to the spirit of the region – its craftsmanship, its simplicity, its strength. And then he said: “When I read about your work in the Basque Country – about what you built in Gernika – I thought, maybe this is the man who understands us. Maybe he understands what it means to build from small things. Maybe he understands the balance between fire and silence.”

I remember looking out the window while he spoke. The morning mist had started to lift from the valley, revealing the rooftops of the town below, the narrow streets, the church spire cutting through the grey. Fire and silence. That’s exactly what this place feels like. We talked for nearly an hour. About football, yes, but also about identity, about how culture can shape how a team plays, how a region breathes through its club. I told him I wasn’t sure I was ready to step back into the game. That my head still wasn’t clear. That my heart was somewhere between Zarautz and these mountains.

He didn’t try to convince me. He just said, quietly, “Take your time. But I think Chur might be waiting for someone like you.”

When the call ended, I sat there for a long time, phone still in my hand. I could hear the river outside, faint through the open window. The sun had risen just enough to warm the wooden floor beneath my feet. Part of me wanted to call him back immediately and say yes. Another part wanted to disappear into the stillness of the valley and stay hidden a little longer. I don’t know what I’ll decide. But something in that conversation stirred something I thought I’d lost. The idea that maybe football still has a place for me. That maybe there’s still something worth building – something that could carry both the Basque spirit that forged me and the Swiss calm that has always steadied me.

Tonight, as I write this, the church bells are echoing through the town. Xabier is asleep in the next room, breathing softly. Iker’s photo sits on the table beside me.

I whisper to it without thinking.

“Maybe it is time.”

Then I close the notebook and let the silence return.

Return to Graubünden

The morning air in Chur feels like glass. Clean, bright, sharp enough to wake something dormant inside you. I watched the light creep over the mountains as I drank my first coffee, the kind of soft, wintry dawn that makes you feel both small and grounded. I thought about how strange it is to be here again – not as a visitor to my uncle Xabier’s home, but as manager of Chur.

Marc Jaggi had got his man. 

He agreed to meet me at the club offices just before nine. He’s a man who doesn’t waste words, the kind who values sincerity over ceremony. He offered his hand, firm and steady, and gestured toward the door with a half-smile. “Let’s not sit inside,” he said. “We’ll talk while we walk.” So we did – two men tracing the edge of a football pitch, steam rising from our Thermos cups, the snow melting on the touchlines. This wasn’t glitz and glamour, but it was real. Marc spoke with quiet conviction about what he wanted this club to become. “We don’t need promises, Iñaki. We need roots.”

The Obere Au complex still feels new – a clean, modern stadium tucked beside the river, framed by mountain ridges that catch the light in the afternoons. The one stand hold barely three thousand, half of them seated, but it has a warmth to it, a sense of purpose. I remembered coming here as a young boy on visits to Xabier, standing with him in the cold, watching Chur play with a stubbornness that outlasted their quality. Even then, the people here didn’t expect glamour; they expected honesty.

When I arrived at the training area, the players were already warming up. There’s a quiet discipline to them, a rhythm you only get from those raised in the valleys – kids who grew up juggling a ball on gravel, playing until the sun dipped behind the cliffs. I watched Patrick Aklin, barely seventeen, calling out instructions like he’d been here for years. Altin Mazotti, all intensity and energy, working harder than anyone else. Andri Michel, a relative veteran at twenty-four, calm and precise, guiding the younger ones through the drills. They’re all from Graubünden. You can hear it in their accents, see it in their body language. There’s pride in representing their home, even if the wages are modest and the facilities even more modest still. Then there’s Drago Radojičić, from Zürich – young, talented, raw. He’s not local, but you can tell he’s trying to absorb the rhythm of this place. I later find out that Drago is only sixteen and on loan at the club. His humility in conversation and his resilience to leave his Rapperswil home and head to the moments is not lost ion me. The same goes for Eray Burmaci from Aargau, and the few others who’ve arrived from outside the canton. They all uttered the same thing to me: “Football here has its own altitude. You must learn to breathe differently.”

Later that morning, I met with the staff. It felt more like sitting in a local committee meeting than a professional football department. Kévin Nouchet, my assistant, serious but warm; Martial Bavarel, the director of football, quietly attentive; and Pietro Wirz, the chief scout, who slid a folder across the table. When I opened it, I found it empty – no reports, no names, just blank pages. He looked almost apologetic. “We’re rebuilding,” he said simply. There was no frustration in his tone, only realism. Every man in that room works part-time. Some coach in the evenings after shifts. Others volunteer their time entirely. And yet, there’s an authenticity about them that I find humbling. They talk about football like people who’ve seen too many winters to romanticise it – but still love it enough to show up every day.

Afterward, Marc and I had lunch at a café near the station – capuns and black coffee. He told me about the club’s history, about how the new stadium was built not for prestige, but survival. “This place,” he said, “is about endurance. We don’t shine. We hold.” I nodded, because I understood exactly what he meant.

In the afternoon, I walked alone to the Obere Au pitch, now empty, its grass almost too perfect against the mountain backdrop. It’s a multi-sport complex, shared between football, athletics, and the Calanda Broncos – the American football team whose tall white goalposts still stood at either end of the field. They looked strange and familiar all at once, like symbols of borrowed ambition. I sat in the stands where I once stood with Xabier decades ago. Of course, it’d all been rebuilt since then but I could still hear his voice – his belief that football in places like this wasn’t about escape, but resilience. “In the mountains, you learn to climb slowly,” he used to say.

As the light began to fade, I stopped by the youth training session. The sound of laughter echoed across the pitch. Kids in oversized kits, boots caked with mud, shouting in Romansh and Swiss-German, chasing the ball like it was their whole world. Watching them stirred something in me – a reminder that this sport, stripped of all excess, is still about joy and belonging.

By the time I returned to Xabier’s house, night had fallen. He was asleep by the fire, his breathing steady, a book resting on his chest. I stood quietly, feeling the weight of the day settle. For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t haunted by loss or uncertainty.

Today was not about tactics or formations. It was about rediscovering the feeling of being part of something honest – something made by hands that have worked the land and loved it.

Tomorrow the real work begins. 

But tonight, I feel calm.

I am home again.

Chur in crisis or just a dip?

It’s getting hard to tell whether FC Chur’s start to the 2026/27 season is a slow burn or a slow-motion car crash. On paper, we look fine – respectable even – but football, as every long-suffering Chur supporter knows, isn’t played on paper. It’s played on frosty Sunday afternoons when you can barely feel your fingers, and our defence looks just as numb.

Let’s start with the numbers, since everyone at the club keeps talking about “data-driven progress.” The passing is neat and tidy, an 86% completion rate, good enough for 9th in the league. We keep it on the floor, we move it around – but it’s like watching someone decorate a cake without ever cutting it. We look pretty, but the end product is half-baked. Only two chances created per game despite all that possession tells its own story. The talent is there, but something in the final third feels like it’s being powered by candlelight instead of electricity.

Our 1 goal per 90 minutes isn’t disastrous, it’s just… average. Seventh in the division. You wouldn’t write a song about it, but you wouldn’t cry either. The issue is, our non-penalty expected goals (1.0 per 90) suggest that what we are getting is exactly what we deserve. It’s not bad luck. It’s not bad refereeing. It’s just bad finishing – or maybe bad decision-making. Or maybe, whisper it, bad tactics from the previous regime?

At least we run. My word, do we run. 80.25 sprints per match, fifth-best in the league. It’s the kind of stat managers love to quote when they’ve lost 2–0: “The lads worked hard, you can’t fault their effort.” And you can’t – but you can question why we’re sprinting so much if half those runs lead to nowhere. If running alone won matches, we’d be champions of Europe.

The defensive side, though… that’s where the pain really sets in. Zero clean sheets. Not one. Zilch. The only time we’ve seen a clean sheet this season was hanging on the washing line behind the training pitch. We concede 1.1 goals per 90, which sounds reasonable until you realise that’s with an xGA of 1.1 too – meaning the opposition are scoring exactly as much as we gift them. That’s not bad fortune. That’s just being reliably generous.

The most baffling stat of all? Tackle success: 67.9% – dead last in the league. Fourteenth. We couldn’t win a tackle in a phone booth. I’m not sure if we’re tackling too late, too early, or simply in the wrong postcode, but something’s seriously amiss. To make matters worse, we’re also 13th for total tackles per match (just 6.6). It’s like we’ve collectively decided that tackling is a superstition best avoided. Yet somehow, paradoxically, we lead the entire division in interceptions with 21.5 per match. So, we’re not lazy – we’re just allergic to physical contact. It’s like watching eleven librarians trying to play gegenpressing.

Individually, the numbers tell a story that’s part-tragedy, part-comedy. At least we’re never boring.

——

In goal, Nicola Hartmann and Patrick Aklincontinue their weekly audition to see who can cause the fewest heart attacks. Hartmann, with 530 minutes and 66% passing, at least tries to build from the back, while Aklin, on 40% passing, seems to believe distribution is a concept invented by his critics. Neither has a clean sheet, and the closest they’ve come to one is probably in their laundry basket.

At the back, Nico Spadin deserves a quiet round of applause – 86% passing, 100% tackles won, and a balanced possession of +0.2. He’s not flashy, just functional – and at Chur, that’s practically saintly. Meanwhile, Drago Radojcic has been the rock amid the rubble: 84% headers won, 88% pass accuracy, and a stunning +17.2 possession rating. He’s one of the few defenders who looks like he’s read the manual on positioning yet, seemingly, just wants to make ten yard passes to boost those numbers!

At left back, Eray Burmaci has been ever-present – 720 minutes, 86% passing, and just enough composure to make you think he knows what he’s doing. But with a tackle success rate of 60% and a header win rate of 64%, he’s been as solid as a door made of damp cardboard. However, 17% of his passes have either been progressive or key and that is fantastic, especially when his possession differential (possession won subtract possession lost) sits at just -0.8, you’ll see that he’s able to get the ball forward and makes things happen. A playmaking full back is a rarity at this level and I look forward to seeing how he’s used.

On the opposite side, Ecran Özkan – at just 17 – has quietly been one of our better defenders. 85% pass completion, 100% tackle success, and a positive possession rating of +5.6. He’s not glamorous, but he’s dependable – the kind of player you only notice when he’s not there.

In the middle of the park, Furkan Sarac and Andri Michel are our workhorses. Sarac wins the ball, gives it away, then wins it again – the eternal loop of the Chur midfielder. His 0.15 assists per 90 and 85% passing suggest reliability, but nearly 92% of his passes are “boring.” He’s the midfield equivalent of a safety-first driver who never breaks the speed limit. Michel, meanwhile, posts 0.17 assists per 90, with 85% accuracy and a tidy possession rating of +5.2 – proof that steady hands still matter in a team that sometimes plays like a pinball machine.

Further forward, the attackers are giving us equal parts joy and rage. Aleksander Mladenovic leads the line statistically with four goals and one assist, a healthy 0.57 goals per 90, and an impressive 28.6% conversion rate. But he’s a paradox – brilliant in moments, then invisible for stretches, with a -15.5 possession differential that suggests he’s giving the ball away more than a street magician. Tiziano Stolz, our left-sided menace, has two goals and two assists, but a similarly worrying -16 possession balance. They’re our danger men – but right now, they’re as likely to spark chaos as creativity.

Julian Truttman remains the romantic’s favourite: one goal, one assist, and 89% passing accuracy. Yet, he’s losing possession 17 times more than he gains it, which makes watching him a bit like buying a lottery ticket – exciting until you check the results. And then there’s Alessandro Laurenti, whose season can best be described as a polite mystery. No goals, no assists, just 12.5% of his shots on target and a painful -19.5 possession rating. He’s a winger who seems allergic to both the ball and the touchline.

Used off the bench, though, there’s a hero waiting in the wings. Sandro Villiger has quietly produced two assists in just 251 minutes, with a wild +9.7 possession differential and an uncanny ability to turn chaos into opportunity. When he’s on, things happen – sometimes good, sometimes catastrophic, but never dull.

——

For all the frustration, finger-pointing, and half-serious suggestions that we replace our midfield with traffic cones, there’s a quiet sense that something bigger is starting to stir. Credit where it’s due – the Chur board have finally shown vision by appointing Iñaki Arriola, a man whose footballing soul was forged in the hard granite of the Basque Country. You can feel it already: the discipline, the structure, the obsession with collective identity over individual flash. It’s a brave appointment, and, for once, it feels like the kind of bravery that might actually pay off.

Arriola isn’t the type to paper over cracks with easy words. You can see it in his touchline stare – analytical but human, as if he’s carrying the weight of every missed tackle and misplaced pass himself. He’s spoken about previously about compactness, transitions, and “intelligent pressing,” which sound like alien concepts to most of us who grew up shouting “get stuck in!” from behind the railings. But there’s something deeply reassuring about him. He radiates calm conviction – the kind that makes you believe he can turn even our lopsided chaos into order.

This club has always been at its best when led by people who care more about the town than the headlines. Arriola seems cut from that cloth. He’s here not to reinvent Chur, but to remind us who we are: a proud, stubborn, occasionally self-sabotaging club that refuses to stop believing. If anyone can turn these statistics into a story worth singing about, it’s him.

So yes, the data looks grim, the defending looks porous, and the win column still looks like an empty bookshelf – but for the first time in a long while, there’s faith. Faith that the numbers can rise. Faith that the football can improve. Faith that under Iñaki Arriola, Chur might finally start playing like Chur again.