It was a Monday film session that came with a pressure that had not existed for several weeks. The players filtered in with their usual banter, but it became serious the moment Laurence arrived. There was no clipboard in hand. No easy smile. Just a clenched jaw, tired eyes and a silence that had weight.
On the screen, Villarreal moved around freely in yellow, like a well-oiled machine. They passed the ball easily, exuding confidence and neatness. They were not flamboyant like Madrid, or unpredictable like Atlético. They were ruthless, just one spot above Tenerife. They had a few points of daylight between them, but not much.
Laurence said nothing for a while. He hit play. The room watched. He paused it. He zoomed in on the screen. He paused it again.
"They don't like to be hunted," he said eventually, voice barely above a whisper but firm.
Victor was near the coffee table and leaned his head. "You want to press them?"
Laurence gave a slight nod. "Not just press. Suffocate."
There were a few murmurs that rippled across the room. Players looked at each other. Eyebrows raised - Natalio, who was always running, gave a tired half smile. Joel sat up in his seat, more interested.
Laurence went to the whiteboard. He picked up a marker and drew three thick horizontal lines across the pitch diagram—zones of pressure.
"We've been conservative. Solid. Disciplined. Mid-block. But Villarreal—they want rhythm. Control. They build from deep with patience. Short passes, triangles, little feints to drag you out. We let them do that, we lose."
He tapped the first line on the board. "This is the breaking of that rhythm. First line: Joel, Natalio, Griezmann. No waiting. You hunt their centre-backs and their keeper. Make them make bad passes."
He drew arrows now. "Joel presses from the left but inverts to block their right-back. Natalio leads centrally but can drop on Alonso if needed. Griezmann floats—his job is to shade the pivot."
Laurence's eyes roamed around the players. "Casemiro and Kitoko will sit deeper, to sweep the middle. After that, everything is forward movement."
He let the marker drop. "You'll all be dead by the 60th minute."
Long pause.
"But if we do it right, they'll be dead by the 30th."
The locker room on matchday was filled with nervous excitement and an electric feeling. The Estadio Heliodoro Rodríguez López was full again as the kickoff was approaching, and the noise was echoing throughout the concrete walls. The fans were aware of the magnitude of this match. Villarreal were not giants, but they were gatekeepers. Winning here meant more than three points—it meant legitimacy.
Laurence was standing with his hands behind his back as the players laced their boots and slipped on their jerseys. Victor was leaning against a bench nearby, spotting cues in body language more than anything.
"They look ready." he said under his breath.
"They have to be." Laurence replied, "I'm betting their lungs."
Outside the sun was setting, and the shadows were growing across the pitch. The whistle blew.
From the opening minutes, Tenerife pressed like hungry wolves who hadn't eaten in weeks.
Natalio ball-parked the two centre backs with unrelenting pace, forcing rushed passes. Joel was buzzing up and down the flank, tilting right back into the back foot with every pass backwards. Griezmann hovered like an apparition around Villarreal's holding midfielder, always close enough to allow him to feel unsettled, but never enough to let him breathe.
Villarreal were struggling. Their tidy triangles turned into risky squares. The ball was taking an extra second to get to each player. Their goalkeeper, who was under duress, mis-hit three long balls in the first ten minutes. Every single intercept drew a roar of support from the crowd, but it wasn't just support—it was gasoline.
Laurence hardly left the touchline, while also not missing a moment of the match. Each mis-touch, each successful press, each closed passing lane.
By the fifteenth minute, he saw what he hoped for. Villarreal starting to sag deeper. Their full-backs, who were previously further away on the sides, were only 5-10 yards back from their original position. Their midfielders couldn't drift forward, for they were petrified of being caught in transition.
By the twenty-second minute, the dam began to break.
Joel closed down Villarreal's right-back, and there was no angle. The ball went inside. Casemiro stepped forward at the perfect moment, recognized the pass and poked it to Kitoko, who accepted the ball on his touch and threaded it to Griezmann on the seam, and Griezmann drove right away without hesitation before sliding a clean ball across the six-yard box.
Natalio was already peeling away from his marker.
Tap in. One touch. One goal.
1–0.
The stadium exploded in noise.
Villarreal didn't waste time sulking. They adapted. Cani began to drop deeper, collecting from the centre-backs instead of waiting in space. Santi Cazorla, elegant as ever, floated into pockets between Casemiro and Sicilia. And suddenly, Villarreal weren't scared—they were surgical.
In the 34th minute, one of those passes from Cazorla sliced through the press. Nilmar raced onto it, took one touch inside, and looked ready to shoot. But Aragoneses came flying off his line, diving low to palm it clear. A game-saving intervention.
Laurence exhaled deeply.
They hung on. The players looked gassed, but they continued to push. The press was not quite as intense, but it did enough to keep Villarreal from resolving what to do. Casemiro, for the most part, continued to be everywhere - interceptions, tackles, directing the team, all done with the presence of a cold-blooded general.
The locker room was muted, a sort of half-groan at halftime.
Laurence stood before them, sweat running down his temple, even though he hadn't participated for a second.
"You gave me twenty of the best minutes we have played this season," he said plainly. "You opened up a team that has not lost in the last seven matches. That is not a fluke."
He let that sit.
"Now I am asking for twenty more."
There was no dramatic speech, no call to arms. Only muted nods. They were gassed, but had they come this far, just to sit back and protect a one-goal lead?
"We can rest when we're dead," Natalio muttered, as he sat down, and drawing a soft laugh across the room.
The second half started less erratic, more systematic. Laurence had altered the lines a bit, bringing the forwards back again to perform a mid-press rather than the full frontal assault. The intention now was not to steal the ball at source—but to draw a mistake a little ways from goal.
It worked.
Villarreal had more of the ball. But Tenerife were more dangerous.
In the 63rd minute the home side earned a corner after a slick interchange between Joel and Griezmann. Griezmann took the corner on his own. It wasn't a driven delivery—it floated innocently, and seemed to dare someone to attack it.
It was Casemiro that reacted first.
A colossal leap. A crashing header.
2 - 0.
Finally Laurence afforded himself a quick pump of the fist.
It was also clear that Villarreal were not going to go away. They hardly ever did. In the 81st minute, Cazorla curled one in from outside the box—a brilliant strike, too good even for Aragoneses.
2 - 1.
The last ten minutes were agony.
Tenerife's legs were gone. The press became a desperate block. Sicilia cleared a header off the line. Bellvís cramped up. But they didn't break.
When the final whistle blew, the eruption in the stadium was pure catharsis.
Laurence exhaled for what felt like the first time in an hour.
Victor, beside him, turned and grinned. "Not bad for a mid-table team."
Laurence didn't grin back. He looked up at the scoreboard. Then at his team, slumped on the turf, spent but victorious.
"We're not mid-table," he said quietly. "Not anymore."