A Line in the Sand

I am still trying to learn how to breathe inside the rhythms of part-time football. Some days it feels natural, almost peaceful, the way the town moves at its own pace and the players flow in after work, tired but committed. Other days, though, I feel the walls closing in. I miss the full-time environment of Gernika more than I let on. I miss the routine, the structure, the endless hours on the grass where you could shape a player slowly, piece by piece, until something clicked. Here, two sessions a week give me 180 minutes to influence a squad. It is not enough. Or maybe it is enough, and I am the one who cannot adapt.

The truth is that you do not always seeimprovement at this level. You have to trust that it is happening somewhere beneath the surface. And yet, lately, I have noticed something unsettling. A softness. A slackening. Some of the boys who were here long before me have slipped into old habits. The intensity has dipped. Not drastically, not defiantly – just enough to make me uneasy. It is often the older ones, the ones who know they will start most weeks, the ones who think they already understand what I want because we have won and improved since last season.

But Obere Au cannot be a comfort zone. It has to be a haven for learning. A place where players arrive wanting to grow, not simply to maintain the level they already have. If we allow complacency to creep in now, it will rot us from the inside.

No moment made that clearer than what happened with Javi Martínez.

He had been struggling for weeks. His training scores were consistently low, not just in physical metrics but in attitude – the body language, the reactions, the lack of urgency. On the pitch he offered little. Seven appearances, no goals, no assists, nothing that fit into what we are trying to build. Still, I believed in him at first. I thought he simply needed time to settle, to understand the demands, the altitude, the tempo of this league and this club.

But the gap did not close. It widened. So I called him into my office after training. I closed the door and told him plainly, respectfully, where he stood. My coaching philosophy relies on clarity – specific criticism, direct praise, never anything vague. I told him exactly what needed to improve, how, and why.

He exploded.

At first it was frustration, then anger, then rage. Accusations about playing time, about favouritism, about the training being “unfair,” about the team “not playing to his strengths.” I tried to calm him. I tried to bring the conversation back to something constructive. But he would not have it. The more I spoke, the more he spiralled. It was as if he had been waiting for this moment – to release everything he had been storing since the day he arrived. By the time he stormed out, I knew something fundamental had broken.

Over the next few days Marc, Kevin and I spoke at length. The squad sensed the tension immediately. Training felt heavier, quieter, strained. And I knew – with a sinking clarity – that keeping him would contaminate everything we were trying to build.

So we made the decision. Javi would no longer represent Chur. Just like that, a promising signing, a player with real talent, was gone.

It felt like a fall from grace, but it was also a necessary step. A painful one, but necessary. Because if we talk about transparency, if we talk about honesty and accountability, then we cannot bend those principles the moment they inconvenience us. The culture here is too fragile, too young, to withstand hypocrisy. Everyone must be on the same page – not in personality, not in background, not in style – but in purpose. We have to be aligned in how we train, how we behave, how we respond to adversity. We cannot afford passengers. We cannot afford exceptions. We cannot afford cracks. Javi was not singing from the same sheet. And a choir cannot function if one voice refuses the melody. For every cloud there is a silver lining, though, and Hugo de Llanos – another recruit through my agent links to Spain, steps into the team. Spaniard for Spaniard. Like for like.

Part-time football is testing me in ways I did not expect. But moments like this remind me that culture is built slowly, stubbornly, brick by brick. And it reminds me that leadership requires decisions that hurt, decisions that leave a mark, decisions that make you doubt yourself before they make you stronger. I hope this is one of those decisions.