There is a steady stream of calls, but a torrent of messages, mainly on WhatsApp. Increasingly, this is how transfers are negotiated — the first sight of a contract or an offer for a player will be over WhatsApp — and it is Monchi’s preferred method of communication. But its demands are Sisyphean.

In June, July and August, when the transfer market is open, he cannot keep up with the volume of messages he receives. By the time he has typed one reply, another dozen have landed. He replies in flurries, but only to the most pressing ones. The vast majority go unread, swamped by more urgent arrivals.

He feels guilty about it: not just on a professional level, but a personal one. A few days before we meet, he was talking to the chairman of a club. They were talking about the frenzy of it all, these months when the soccer world reshapes itself, how it never stops, how there is never time for anything else, how you have to ignore everyone else in your life.

Nobody thrives in that environment quite so well as Monchi. Over the last two decades, he has built a reputation as one of the quickest talent spotters and sharpest deal makers in soccer. And yet the club chairman said something that stayed with him: “The transfer window,” he had said, “is a good time to lose friends.”

Market Leaders

No team in Europe has played the transfer market quite as well, or as long, as Sevilla. Over the last 20 years or so, this is a club that has made its name — and transformed its fortunes — through its ability to know not just whom to buy, but when to sell.