Three and a half years have passed since my uncle died and I returned to Graubünden, and somehow it still feels surreal to write that sentence. The project has swallowed me whole – in a good way, mostly – but the edges of the stress are beginning to show. I barely speak to anyone in Zarautz anymore. My mother is ageing faster than I want to admit, and there are days when the distance between Chur and the Basque coast feels impossibly vast. Nearly five years now since my father Jon died. A decade ago I imagined raising my children somewhere between San Sebastián and Bilbao, surrounded by family. Life has a strange rhythm; it rarely follows the patterns we sketch.

Yet here I am, 44, my life anchored between the Alps. My Romansch is near-perfect now, something I never expected to be able to say, and I’ve re-learnt German, Italian, and French to the level I once had as a multilingual child visiting relatives. My wife and children have settled into the snowy winters with a sense of calm I sometimes envy. My son – Gaizka – attends school in Chur and is thriving. He has, to my quiet amusement, become something of a local celebrity: the “trainer’s boy” who gets nods in the street and free pastries he doesn’t need. He handles it with a shrug, which is more than I can say for most adults.

On the pitch, this was a season unlike any other in my career. A record-breaking campaign: 27 wins, 2 draws, and just a single loss – against St. Gallen U21. Eighteen points clear at the summit, with a goalscoring record so absurd the league will talk about it for years. None of the other regional champions came close to this kind of dominance; their tables all looked human. Ours felt like something else entirely, a kind of fever dream of fluidity, pressure, and ruthlessness.

Alexandre Vayvandez continued to impress, serving up eight assists from 7.87 expected, with an intelligence in the half-spaces that makes him look older than his years. Chur born Andrea Favara broke into the team late but contributed nine goals and assists combined – a spark, a growing creative heartbeat. Nico Ruffieux and Matteo Gambardella were devastating together: 27 goal contributions each, a symmetry that speaks to their chemistry. Ruffieux glides, Gambardella cuts, and between them opponents ran out of solutions. And of course, Dion Cakolli – 17 goals and five assists – our top scorer, eternally underrated outside our walls, eternally indispensable within them.

We renewed every key contract, something I take pride in. That stability, that continuity of ideas, is part of why we were able to achieve what we did. But with stability comes expectation, and the pressure for it to continue is already suffocating. The board are demanding another promotion. The media are projecting dominance as if it’s a tap we can switch on. And newly elected president Simon Hofer has already announced he will retire at the end of next season, adding an unsettling sense of expiry to everything we do. What does that mean for the project? For me? For us?

The media’s Team of the Season includes Ruffieux, Gambardella, and Cakolli. Are they truly this good, or did we simply hit a perfect storm of form, confidence, and structure? I believe in them, but I’m not naïve. Football is cyclical. Repeating a season like this is almost impossible. Our early transfer window suggests few arrivals. Perhaps that’s a vote of confidence. Perhaps it’s a warning. Perhaps that is me, being too proud, too loving, too close to what we have created here. I’ve won 72 of my first 114 games here. When I write that, it doesn’t feel real. Can it continue? Should it? These are questions I ask quietly, in the moments between planning and preparing, between being a manager and being a father, between belonging here and missing elsewhere.

Yet there are reminders of growth around us. Schluein Ilanz were promoted to the fifth tier – another local club rising. Football in the region is stirring in a way that makes me proud to be a part of it. And Samu Castillejo, who hung up his boots this month, agreed to become our new chief scout. A touch of Spain added to our Alpine project. He understands me, understands the football I want, and perhaps understands the parts of home I’ve tried to recreate here. These things are working, moving, ticking, but, underneath it all – I am conscious that it might come unstuck if this project does not continue at this pace.

As I close the book on this season, I feel pride, yes – but also fragility. Success creates weight. And next year, we will find out what we are really made of