The waves crashing on the Atlantic coast quietly seeped in through the opened balcony doors. Sunlight poured into the space, and the air was filled with salt and the soothing sounds of choice missed on a languid Canary Islands morning. Laurence Gonzalez sat frozen on the well-worn leather sofa, fingers wrapping around a chipped porcelain cup of café con leche. His eyes—desperately still half-expecting to see a smartphone or digital calendar blinking, "2025"—were fixed to a physical wall calendar.
"Junio 2010," was noted in thick red marker.
He hadn't moved since waking up about an hour prior in what was supposedly his apartment—tightly decorated but evidently a place for him to live. The clothes hanging in the wardrobe were sized for him. There were folders upon folders on the kitchen table emblazoned with "CD Tenerife" logos and official club paperwork. There was a team polo shirt draped over a chair. The notes in the notepad next to the bed—the big lined ones from the university bookstore—were in his handwriting.
But Laurence Gonzalez-last he could remember-was in the middle of his typical Tuesday in 2025. Coffee shop, laptop open, watching old football games, and writing a blog post on tactical evolution under Julian Nagelsmann. He remembered reaching for his phone. A hard pain to the back of his neck. Suddenly a darkness.
Now this.
He stood up and walked over to the balcony, with the cool sea breeze meeting his skin. In the distance, he saw the outlines of Estadio Heliodoro Rodríguez López, the home of CD Tenerife.
He heard a knock at the door.
Laurence froze.
Again, the knock came-a more forceful knock. Hesitant, he opened it and found a short stout man with graying hair and piercing eyes. He was wearing a loose-fit linen shirt, shorts, and had a lanyard with a club ID badge around his neck.
It came again — this time with a little more firmness to it; he hesitated for a second, opened the door, and encountered a short, stout man with graying hair and piercing eyes. He wore a simply cut linen shirt, shorts, and had a lanyard with a club ID identifying badge around his neck.
"¡Míster González!" he said in a lilting Spanish, his face beaming with excitement. "Hope I'm not interrupting. I want to deliver the preseason updated schedule from the office. The president wants to know if you're okay with moving the friendly against Hércules to the 20th."
Laurence blinked. "Uh... sure. That's fine."
"Perfecto," he said and handed over a thick folder. "Players are in three weeks. If you need anything, just call me, míster. Disfrute las vacaciones."
Laurence watched the man walk off down the corridor and then slowly shut the door.
So it wasn't a dream. Or a hoax. Or a breakdown.
He was Laurence Gonzalez, 34 years of age, head coach of CD Tenerife, recently promoted to La Liga from finishing third in the Segunda División 2009-10 season.
He reopened the floppy and opened the file, a collection of training session schedules, physiotherapy check up schedules, even a list of retuning players. A few names stood out— nino the aging forward that scored 18 goals last year, ricardo the experienced back, omar the homegrown winger.
He combed his hair back.
It was all real.
Somehow by some inexplicable stroke of luck he had woken from the dead, reincarnated, or rather transported into a body that the world would recognize as him. Some rendition of himself that led an indifferent yet successful promotion campaign the previous season taking CD Tenerife back to the top flight to Spanish football for the first time in nearly a decade.
And he knew what was next.
The 2010-11 La Liga season was not going to be favourable for promoted sides, Málaga were spending, Deportivo and Racing were good enough to bite, there was those beasts Real Madrid and Barcelona.
This wasn't an FM save he could just reboot. This was his life.
He took a deep breath and sat back down.
A laptop lay on the desk ready to be booted. Old fashioned. Heavy. He pressed the power button. It spun up, Windows Vista. He groaned quietly.
"Alright," he said to himself. "Let's see what I'm working with."
He attempted to open the squad sheet.
It was a reasonable little team. Reasonably solid defensively, a couple of veterans in midfield. Nothing really to write home about up front except for Nino, and now he was 36. A couple of promising youth players - though Cristo González was still at the Juvenil A level, he was at least a name he recognized from the future.
He leaned back and considered.
If this was happening to him - and everywhere in his being it felt like it was - then he had a tiny window. The window of opportunity would be in the preseason. His window of time to get some actual eyes on the players and serve up a system that could weather the storm. He was not going to be able to spend Real Sociedad or Betis' cash, but he might be able to outsmart them. Maybe.
He was going to need some scouting. Some contacts. He needed to know the budget.
And he had to discover exactly why it had happened. Was it a second chance? A punishment? An odd joke from a god with a bizarre sense of humor?
He bitterly chuckled to himself.
"Congratulations," he grumbled. "You're a second-division analyst turned La Liga time-traveling coach."
The absurdity crashed into him once more.
Yet, amid the confusion, something stirred inside him.
A challenge.
And football, regardless of what year, is a game of margins, of mistakes and brilliance, of pressure and patience. He had spent his life analyzing football. And now he was in it.
He checked the calendar again.
"Pre-season in three weeks," he murmured. "Let's get to work."