The conference room at Stade Louis II smelled faintly of old coffee, dry-erase markers, and leather. The early morning light bled through the narrow window slits, slicing long stripes across the tactical board that dominated the far wall. A heavy oak table stretched the center of the room, the kind of furniture that had outlived half a dozen coaches and still bore the shallow scars of their failures.
Demien—no, Yves—stood with one hand resting loosely against the edge of the table, the other tucked in the pocket of his jacket. His reflection, blurred and broken by the glass whiteboard behind him, barely moved.
The staff filtered in with the quiet familiarity of men who had done this dance a thousand times. Michel came first, eyes sharp, carrying the clipboard pressed to his ribs like a shield. Then Bertrand, the fitness coach, wiry and taut. Pascal, the goalkeeping coach, dragging a chair noisily across the floor with a wince. Lastly, the analyst, young and eager, fumbling his notes before sliding into the last chair with a clatter.
Murmured greetings. Chairs scraping. Bottles thudding onto wood.
Demien stayed silent.
Michel cleared his throat, flipping open his clipboard with a flick. His voice was crisp, rehearsed.
"Player loads are stable post-warm-up. No flagged red zones on the GPS. Evra limited to seventy percent workload until next week. Nonda's groin tightness—still being monitored. Travel arrangements confirmed for the first friendly."
Heads nodded in polite unison.
Efficient. Routine.
Demien let the silence stretch a breath longer than was comfortable once Michel finished, just enough for eyes to start flicking toward him.
He stepped forward casually, pulling a marker from the ledge under the board. The cap snapped off with a soft pop.
"We're changing the structure," Demien said, voice calm, low, controlled.
No dramatics. No thunderclap.
Just fact.
He drew a loose rectangle on the board—basic formation outline. Then slashed a few diagonal lines through it, marking zones rather than traditional player dots.
"We need to widen our spatial drills. Not just for possession. For phase shifting."
Michel's brow twitched, but he said nothing.
Demien continued, drawing fast but precise strokes.
"More positional rondos. Wider passing lanes. Triangulated third-man movements to break the press before it tightens."
Pascal, the goalkeeping coach, leaned back slightly, arms crossing defensively.
The analyst scribbled furiously, unsure whether to look up or keep his head down.
Demien pivoted, clicking the marker against his palm once.
"Defenders must learn to recognize trigger points—not just compact when pressed, but initiate the counter-trap. Win the first ball, recycle it vertically before the opponent closes."
Michel's fingers tapped once, twice, against the wood.
No one interrupted.
Demien watched them absorb it—or fail to. Watched the small movements: Bertrand's jaw flexing slightly, the analyst's pen freezing mid-word, Pascal's eyes narrowing.
He tossed the marker lightly onto the tray and turned back, arms folding behind him.
"In short, we stop reacting to opponents. We start setting the tempo before they realize it's changed."
He let it hang there.
The words weren't heavy. They were surgical.
Vertical recycling.Pressing traps.Second wave anchoring.
Terms that had weight in 2025. Here, they sounded half-invented. Exotic. Dangerous.
The room had gone very still.
No direct resistance.No mutiny.Just... calculation.
Bertrand leaned back in his chair, slow and deliberate. His hands folded across his stomach. Not dismissive—distant. Like he was already building two arguments: one to agree if things went well, another to protect himself if it collapsed.
Michel didn't move. Not yet.
Pascal exchanged a glance with Bertrand, one of those short, silent communications that spoke volumes. Old coaches. Set in their ways. Survivalists.
Demien saw it all.Filed it all.Didn't flinch.
This wasn't rebellion. It wasn't even doubt.
It was the smell of old blood, waiting to see if the new general would get cut first.
He could feel the air shift slightly—almost imperceptible.
Michel finally tapped the end of his pen once against the table.
Just once.
Sharp. Loud in the silence.
His face stayed neutral, unreadable.
"Ambitious," Michel said simply.
No smile. No derision. No endorsement.
A single word, heavy with meaning.
Demien let a small breath escape through his nose, almost a chuckle. Not mocking—measured.
He straightened slightly and glanced once around the table.
"This is Monaco," he said, voice quiet but carrying. "We don't have the biggest guns. We have to be sharper. Faster. Smarter."
He turned back to the board, wiped a clean diagonal through the old formation markings, and left the new zones standing alone—empty frameworks waiting for belief to fill them.
"Evolution's coming, whether we want it or not," he said over his shoulder. "Best to get there first."
No one answered.
Pascal scratched the back of his neck absently.
Bertrand nodded once, slow and noncommittal.
The analyst scribbled like his life depended on it.
Michel tapped his pen once more, set it down, and stood.
Chairs scraped back.
Bottles rattled against the tabletop.
No words were spoken as the staff began filing out. No backslaps. No casual small talk. Just the low murmur of shuffled paper and the heavy sense of something shifting beneath the surface.
Demien didn't move immediately.
He stayed by the board, eyes tracing the sharp lines and fresh angles drawn across the glass.
The old Monaco would have seen that board as dangerous.
He saw it as necessary.
By the time he turned to leave, the room was almost empty.
Almost.
Michel stood by the door, waiting, arms folded loosely.
Their eyes met.
For a second, nothing passed between them.
No approval.No defiance.
Just understanding.
A quiet battlefield drawn in glass and marker ink.
Demien gave a slight nod.
Michel didn't return it.
But he didn't look away, either.
Chairs scraped back against the tile floor in slow, staggered movements. A few clipped words passed between coaches—nothing meaningful, nothing binding. Paperwork shuffled. Pens clicked back into pockets. Bottles snapped shut with little bursts of plastic tension.
Demien stayed where he was, giving no sign of hurry, letting them file out ahead of him.
Not in a rush to chase after approval.Not desperate to fill the silences with reassurances.
The glass board behind him still carried the new tactical zones he'd drawn. Harsh red and blue lines bisecting the traditional shapes, jagged as broken ribs.
A battlefield.
He could almost hear the unease crackling off the walls, even if no one said a word.
Michel moved first, brushing past the coffee station with deliberate slowness, eyes flicking toward his phone but never really checking it. His stance was too casual to be casual. An old veteran's instinct—linger near the exits. Read the room without looking like you're reading it.
Pascal and Bertrand followed next, voices low and muttering just below the threshold of comprehension. Bertrand's chuckle sounded wrong in the air—too dry, too tight.
Demien adjusted the sleeves of his jacket slowly, watching the door swing open and slap softly shut behind them.
The analyst lingered near the edge of the whiteboard wall, tapping his marker nervously against his thigh. Too young to hide his nerves properly.
One of the assistant coaches leaned toward him—older, heavier-set, with the deep creases of a man who'd coached long enough to forget why he started.
Their voices dropped.
Not enough.
"So we're Johan Cruyff now?" the assistant muttered under his breath, head tilting just slightly toward the young analyst.
A snicker, sharp and muffled, slipped between them. A quick exchange of glances. Eyes flickering back toward the board. Toward him.
Not loud enough to demand a response.Not bold enough to challenge him outright.
But not innocent either.
Demien caught it clean.
Not with a flinch. Not even with a tilt of the head.
Just a small tightening around the corner of his mouth. A note folded carefully into a drawer for later.
He didn't speak.
Didn't lift his head.
He moved instead—calm, measured steps toward the whiteboard. Fingers trailing the ledge where the marker rested. A casual touch. Ownership without announcement.
The formations were still there. His lines. His fingerprints.
Without turning around, he plucked the cap off a different marker—green this time—and added one, simple note beneath the positional sketches:
TRANSITIONAL TRIGGER POINTS: Phase 2 Adjustment.
Clean, neat, underlined once.
The act was quiet. Almost invisible.
But in a room trained to read every gesture, every silence, every slight change in posture—nothing about it was missed.
The analyst's tapping stopped.
The assistant shifted his weight back onto his heels, clearing his throat softly.
Michel, from the coffee station, slid his phone into his pocket and finally moved toward the hallway. No comments. No jokes.
Demien capped the marker, set it back in its slot, and turned away from the board.
Footsteps behind him were faster now. Shuffling. Doors pushing open. Small knots of men pretending they had places to be, conversations to continue elsewhere.
No direct confrontation.
Not yet.
The war would come quiet first. Little doubts slipped between smiles. Tiny hesitations added to group chats. Coaching conversations rewritten when he wasn't in the room.
It was always like that.
Change didn't break people by charging through the front door. It wore them down with a thousand little cuts. Confusion first. Then mistrust. Then rejection if the results didn't follow fast enough.
Demien adjusted the lapels of his jacket as he walked toward the doorway, each step measured, shoes clicking softly against the tile.
The hallway outside stretched long and thin under the humming lights. Muted posters of Monaco legends lined the walls—Barthez, Henry, Thuram—smiling in frozen moments of past glory.
He didn't pause to look at them.
The door behind him swung back on its hinge, sighing closed with a low thud.
Demien's pace didn't change.
He walked the hallway like it belonged to him. Like the tension left behind in the conference room couldn't touch the rhythm building in his veins.
He wasn't chasing them.He wasn't explaining himself.
Football wasn't about convincing people with speeches. It was about weight. About control. About shaping the air so that even when you left the room, your presence stayed behind.
They would talk.They would joke when they thought he couldn't hear.
And they would watch the results when it mattered.