Some departures are easier to write than arrivals.

I’d only worked with Didier for a few weeks, but it never felt that way. Football clubs have a strange habit of compressing time; by the third away trip together it felt as though we’d all been sharing airports, hotel breakfasts and late-night coach journeys for years. He was one of those managers who somehow managed to know the name of every member of staff, from the analysts and physios to the volunteers who opened the gates on matchdays. He carried success lightly, never mistaking authority for distance, and that filtered through the entire building.

I’d watched him leave the training ground more than once with three or four academy players still talking beside him, continuing conversations that had started on the pitch an hour earlier. He laughed easily, listened properly and never seemed to perform leadership for the cameras, which probably explains why the cameras liked him anyway. The players trusted him. The staff believed in him. Even when results dipped, nobody started looking over their shoulder because the culture underneath never wobbled. That’s a difficult thing to build, and an even harder thing to replace.

Writing the announcement felt strangely personal. My job was to reduce two and a half years into three carefully written paragraphs and a polished photograph, knowing full well that no supporter would ever see the dozens of tiny moments that actually defined his time here. They wouldn’t see him helping carry equipment back onto the coach after an away game, or waiting for a young academy player outside the dressing room because he’d promised to watch one last clip together before they flew home. Football announcements are tidy. Football endings rarely are.

Colorado Rapids had earned themselves a very good manager.

Miami FC had just lost something far more difficult to quantify than wins and league positions.

As I pressed “publish”, I realised it was the first time I’d ever announced the end of someone’s story before I knew who would be writing the next chapter.

For three years I’d convinced myself I wasn’t following Tomás Villalba. I was following football. Or perhaps I was following the South. I’d driven thousands of miles to clubs where he hadn’t worked, sat in stadiums he’d never visited, eaten in towns he would probably never see, and yet somehow our paths kept bending back towards one another. Knoxville. Greenville. Conversations on quiet touchlines after everybody else had gone home. Half-finished coffees outside empty stadiums. A manager who always seemed more interested in explaining why something had happened than celebrating that it had.

I owe him more than I suspect he’ll ever know. Before Knoxville I ‘entertained’ football. Afterwards I began to understand it. Not because he ever sat me down and tried to teach me, but because he couldn’t help talking about the game the way other people talk about family. Distances between players. Why the first press mattered more than the second. Why courage wasn’t sprinting after the ball but standing where the game demanded you stand. Somewhere along the way I stopped hearing tactics and started hearing a language.

Now, somehow, we’re colleagues.

That still feels ridiculous to write.

Three years ago I stood outside Regal Soccer Stadium wondering whether soccer was something I’d ever truly understand. Today I spent the afternoon helping prepare graphics announcing the arrival of the man who probably taught me more about football than anyone else I’ve ever met. He still doesn’t know quite how much of my notebooks are filled with his conversations, his ideas and the questions he accidentally left me asking long after I’d driven home.

The strange thing is that none of this feels planned. Football has a habit of introducing people long before it allows them to work together. We spent years crossing paths from opposite sides of the touchline. Today, for the first time, we walked through the same door.

Tomorrow I’ll interview him for Miami FC.

I suspect he’ll think it’s just another press conference.

For me, it feels like the end of one journey and the beginning of another.