Sunlight poured down over Stade Louis II in slow, heavy waves, the kind that blurred the lines between field and sky until everything shimmered at the edges. The air hung thick with heat, clinging to shirts, slipping down into socks, making every breath taste faintly of salt and concrete.
There were no anthems today. No fireworks. Just the thin, scattered applause of a preseason crowd—families with squirming children, a few die-hard supporters leaning over the railings, arms crossed and sunglasses low on their noses.
Demien stood near the edge of the touchline, one foot planted half a step ahead of the other, hands resting behind his back. His jacket stayed on, even as the sun pressed down harder. He felt the sweat bead slowly at his spine, then trail lower, ignored.
To his right, Michel mirrored the stance but kept his arms crossed, head tipped slightly forward, watching the players bounce in warm-up passes with a kind of detached calculation.
No urgent shouting yet. No barking drills. This was a friendly, after all.
The referee blew his whistle sharp and crisp, cutting across the scattered noise. Monaco kicked off, the ball rolling slowly across the polished grass.
And immediately, Demien felt the gap.
The shape was wrong.Not broken—just wrong.
The first few passes wobbled between the back line and midfield, heavy on touches, light on direction. Evra kept his depth smartly, scanning left and right, but ahead of him, the midfield line staggered unevenly. Bernardi pressed too early into Lugano's right half-space, leaving a yawning hole behind him.
Demien's eyes narrowed.
The ball flipped wide, too easily. Lugano's winger burst into the space left exposed, a clean diagonal slicing Monaco apart in three steps.
The crowd gave a little collective inhale—not a gasp yet, but something close.
Pascal, the goalkeeping coach, shifted near the dugout, murmuring something low to Bertrand. Michel's gaze sharpened at Demien's side but didn't move otherwise.
The press was supposed to suffocate Lugano.Instead, it floated. Disjointed. Loose at the seams.
Ten minutes in, Lugano broke again. A flat pass out of midfield, simple, surgical, bypassing three Monaco shirts without so much as a toe reaching in. Evra sprinted back, cutting the angle, forcing a weak shot, but it still drew a sprawling save from the Monaco keeper—an awkward palm that barely pushed the ball around the post.
Demien didn't flinch.
He watched the players regroup—Giuly shouting instructions too late, Zikos pointing furiously at no one in particular, Lefebvre jogging back sheepishly, head half-down.
On the touchline, Michel shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
Demien spoke without taking his eyes off the pitch.
"Spacing's off. Triggers are mistimed."
Michel hummed noncommittally.
A goal wouldn't surprise him now. The patterns were obvious—untrained players trying to simulate something they didn't understand yet. Like musicians trying to improvise jazz after only ever playing military marches.
A long cross came from Lugano's deep left. Zikos and Plasil both moved to challenge it, neither trusting the other to call it. They collided lightly, elbows tangling. The ball popped loose just outside the box.
A Lugano midfielder latched onto it, drawing a desperate tackle from Evra.
Free kick.
Edge of the penalty area.
Demien exhaled through his nose, slow and even.
The Lugano player lined it up, wiped sweat from his brow, then struck it low and hard under the jumping wall. It skimmed the turf, glancing wide of the post by less than a meter.
The crowd clapped nervously. Not for Monaco. For the escape.
Demien saw it in their body language first—the leanings, the shifting weight from one foot to the other, the small, whispered conversations beginning to trickle through the stands.
"Why are they pressing so high?"
"Where's the old Monaco? Solid, tight…"
"Who told them to leave so much space?"
He caught snippets, half-sentences, riding the hot air down toward the field. Not loud. Not cruel. Just confused.
Demien flicked his gaze toward the players.
The midfield was hesitating now—half stepping into spaces, half staying put. Trust was bleeding out of them in real-time, pooling in the spaces Lugano didn't even need to work hard to find.
At the twenty-five-minute mark, Lugano pounced again.
An intercepted lazy pass. A quick one-two through the middle. The forward broke free between Monaco's split centerbacks and calmly slotted the ball low past the charging keeper.
1–0.
The net bulged with a sound that was somehow louder than the muted crowd.
Michel's arms uncrossed, then recrossed. His jaw clenched once.
Demien didn't move.
He watched Lugano celebrate in a muted huddle near the corner flag, then turned his head slightly toward Michel.
"We're half a step late everywhere," he said under his breath.
Michel nodded, cautious, measuring the words before filing them away.
No panic yet.But the first seed of doubt had been planted.
The restart was slow, heavy. Monaco played flatter now, tentative. Lugano sat back, letting them pass harmlessly along the back line, daring them to risk something vertical.
They didn't.
Giuly tried a solo run down the right once, but found himself isolated, surrounded, forced into a back-pass.
Demien clenched his jaw but kept his hands behind his back, the picture of calm authority.
He would not scream from the sideline like a desperate man.He would not throw tantrums or flail.
Mistakes had to be lived first.Felt in the blood.Bled out on the grass.
The first-half clock ticked toward forty-five.
No urgency in the players' movements now. Only the heavy drag of men who knew they were doing something wrong, but not sure how to fix it without being yelled at.
The referee didn't even check his watch before blowing the whistle sharp and short.
Halftime.
Monaco 0.Lugano 1.
Demien stepped off the touchline in silence, his shoes biting softly into the dry grass. The players jogged toward the tunnel without words, their heads dipped low, some tugging at their sleeves, others fiddling with their shorts.
He didn't shout.Didn't call anyone over.
There would be words inside.Not here.
Inside, they would listen properly—or they would not survive the season at all.