The final whistle at Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán echoed through the bones of the stadium, like a hammer striking stone. Final score: Sevilla 2 – 0 Tenerife. Indeed, the defeat had felt foregone from the opening minutes. Tenerife resembled a team that walked into a storm without appropriate shelter: exposed, overwhelmed, and displaced. Jesús Navas carved their flanks to ribbons, Kanouté bulldozed their defense with the determined, heavy-handedness only a veteran of the league can possess, and not even Neymar's flicks and tricks could elevate their performance or result.
When the match finished, Laurence did not shake anyone's hand. He thundered off into the tunnel, head bowed, fists closed. There was no acceptance yet, but there was certainly weariness — unlike rain that seeps through players, this result was soaked through them.
In the locker room, silence was deafening. Socks stained green and brown from turf. Panting breath. Some players remained perched on benches, unwilling to move another foot from that space. Natalio rubbed at cramping calves. Casemiro iced both knees — something he hadn't needed to do for weeks. Neymar, too, did not untie his own cleats. He remained seated, eyes fixed toward the ground.
When Laurence did break that silence, it was sharp: "What the fuck was that?"
His voice pierced through the silence, like a window pane thrown across the room. Heads went up. Some flinched. Joel stared at his shin pads. Ricardo León carefully took a drink of water, still not looking up.
"That's what you bring in October, when we're playing for Europe?" Laurence raged. "You walk around all week like giants, and you didn't even show up to play. You forgot about everything we instilled in you. Just faded when the pressure hit."
Nobody answered. The air started to get thicker - as if every inhalation was full of shame. Doubt. Tiredness.
Laurence lifted his foot, and kicked over a crate of water bottles. Plastic rolled across the tile, clinking like a symphony of shattered nerves.
"Are we going to quit because we're tired?" he yelled. "Because one match knocked us off balance? Do you think Villarreal or Getafe or Sevilla are going to wait until we're ready again?"
"Leave," he spit. "All of you. Go home. Do it alone."
They shuffled one at a time to the door. Neymar still wouldn't lift his head. No one did. Their eyes were too heavy; their bodies too tired. The story of belief, belief, belief? It had frayed around the edges this evening.
One person remained.
Carlos Barreda - a quiet presence who had seen the tears and celebration of Tenerife from the scout to the Segunda promotion - leaned against the wall close to the white board. He crossed his arms and waited.
When the room emptied, he stepped forward. Laurence did not turn. He still studied the floor, breath quiet but quick.
"You done?" Carlos asked.
Laurence took a moment, exhaled, "They sacrificed nothing. Just faded."
Carlos shook his head softly, "They sacrificed everything they had. It just wasn't enough tonight."
Laurence spat. "We can't let it go. One more loss and we can slide to ninth. Europe slips away, and we may as well have never believed in the first place."
Carlos moved behind the bench and efficiently picked up the crate of bottles. With silent care, he rearranged the bottles in the crate. Not a word was wasted.
"You are pushing them," he said. "I understand that they were built to press, to rally. They are built to run through walls, when they are rested. Those walls are going to fall if you don't let them rest. Kitoko isn't a concept in your notebook, he is a twenty nine year old man with knees that absorb each mile. Natalio is running routes that the age group teams would envy in their prime. Casemiro has become such an important piece, that if his pops, that spine unravels."
Laurence leaned back into the bench, drumming his fingers against his knees. The weight of his ideas collapsed under the burden of evidence.
Carlos settled beside him. "You told them to dream, to believe that you belong. And that is fair. But belief isn't a flickering spark. It's a fire that is created one match at a time; and tonight, they needed someone to stoke the embers, not blow through them with rage."
Laurence stared down at the floor, the blood-red paint smudged on the tile beneath the whiteboard scrawls.
"Go take a walk," Carlos finally said, pulling himself up. "I'll handle the aftermath."
Laurence nodded, his eyes dim but nodding.
He pushed himself up and left, shoulders heavier than when he arrived.
------
Outside, the city had slipped into night. Streetlamps shuddered like dying moths. Laurence did not drift toward the sea or the electric bars humming with Instagram stories or praise. He drifted toward the old training ground—the first place Tenerife was made real. Where lads chased a ball under patched nets. A place where he had first felt hope shift from a dream.
Only the empty pitch awaited. The floodlights were dark. The wind pressed low grass into silence.
Laurence sat on the metal bleachers in the dark. He listened to the damp air. The ache in his thighs still echoed of exertion. But this—this weight in his chest—was colder.
He thought of words Carlos had used. He recalled the promise—European football next season. How childish it all sounded now. But how imperative it was to maintain the pulse—not only of tactics but of will.
He followed the smoke that ghosted upwards, away while the lights of Santa Cruz lay distant, warm. His body trembled one time—but from neither cold nor regret. More a wondering if belief can survive a storm—and how many storms one side can weather until the horizon themselves blur.