Tucked away in a portacabin on the outskirts of the leafy village of Ditton, Eder Maestre is preparing to take on one of football’s most daunting jobs.

Big things are happening at London City Lionesses, and have been for some time. Since Michele Kang bought the club in late 2023 and began pumping money into the transfer market, the club has established itself as the great disruptor of women’s football, matching if not exceeding the spending power of the WSL’s heavyweights in a bid to further expedite an already dizzying ascent.

Off the pitch, the project is going swimmingly. This summer, in preparation for just their second top-flight season, London City have managed to sign one of the game’s all-time legends in Alexia Putellas, a two-time Ballon d’Or winner and world champion with Spain.

She has been followed by another Barcelona great in Mapi Leon, Lyonnes forward Kadidiatou Diani, and Arsenal’s Rosa Kafaji. Former England no1 Mary Earps is between the sticks. The new recruits arrive into a squad which already features a heady blend of European experience and high-potential homegrown talent.

At the centre of the whirlwind is Maestre, the man tasked with translating the financial outlay into sporting success. It will be easier said than done.

“I think this season maybe could be the most challenging that I ever faced,” he admits to , speaking on the eve of the new WSL campaign. “The more facilities you have to exploit, the more pressure you feel on your shoulders.”

Margin for error is minimal - the club has been ruthless in the past. Maestre joined London City in January after his popular predecessor Jocelyn Precheur, formerly of Paris Saint-Germain, was axed with the side firmly mid-table.

Maestre’s first half-season in the WSL was not a massive sporting success, either. He took 12 points from 11 matches, three fewer than Precheur managed in the same period before being sacked.

Such are the lofty standards of a Kang team - only the best is good enough. That is made manifest at the Lionesses’ Cobdown Park training ground, currently reduced to a village of temporary buildings as it undergoes a thorough renovation which the club believes will bring its facilities in line with those of top Premier League teams.

For Maestre, the attitude around the club is intoxicating. He holds close the mantra: “Dream big, great realities.” Now he needs his squad to buy into his ideas.

“Dreaming should be something to have always in our minds,” he continues. “This is going to be a light when the darkness comes.”

A fast start will be essential this season if Maestre is to achieve the goals set out for him - namely to qualify for the Champions League - and that means getting all the new faces in his squad on song as soon as possible. The mission begins on Friday night as the Lionesses host a Manchester United under new management in the WSL season curtain-raiser.

He continued: “We have very talented players now, coming from other environments, other cultures, so trying to put them now in a different context is going to be challenging. This is my concern, to align everything, find a middle point.

“The culture, the identity, is not something to create in one day. The winning mentality is step-by-step. Now we need to put all the ingredients we have - signings, better facilities, everything - trying to create a strong recipe. That takes time, but I am here to accelerate the timelines.”

Given the squad’s wealth of Galactico talent, Maestre is not often the man under the microscope. Little is known of the introverted Spaniard, plucked from CD Tenerife, who has shied away from the media spotlight since taking over.

But as a one-time chess prodigy and engineering graduate, he brings a unique perspective to the touchline, melding a data-focused approach with a typically Basque adoration of the game.

That sentiment is mirrored in his approach to chess, or more specifically, the reason he gave up competing at 16.

“I used to play tournaments until the moment people told me I needed to learn how to play,” he explains. “In that moment, I felt that this is not going to be a romantic way to feel the game.

“I had been able to win one or two tournaments against quite good players, then they told me 'you need to learn this move, this opening’. No. If I need to start learning solutions to beat the next opponent, I am going to win because of my memory capacities instead of my creativity, so I don't want this.

“I prefer being not as talented, not as good a player, but all the things I want to reach through chess, I need to feel this from my creativity.”

He balances the sentiment with a healthy dose of empiricism, rooted in his engineering studies. “When you are a programmer, you have to understand the flow of the data. When you are watching football, it is the same.

“To have that systemic vision of all the inputs, all the outcomes that can come from that way to understand every facility that can appear, helps me a lot to codify football in terms of finding this common denominator.

“When you are a programmer, you must be very efficient. It is not just coding, coding, coding, coding. This code must be very effective in terms of the resources you are reclaiming, so football is mostly the same.

“It helped me to understand the things that are appearing in the relations of these things with other ones, trying to create a relational knowledge.”

Perhaps it was his unique intellectual background which piqued Kang’s interest. The pair’s interactions have been limited, but left a lasting impression on Maestre.

He smiles as he recalls their first encounter: “I was a little scared, to be honest. She has this kind of aura.”

But any apprehension was quickly left behind as conversation turned to matters of football.

“After starting to talk with her, the thing that impacted me the most was her listening capability,” he continued. “I really felt her listening with plenty of conscience, taking and considering everything that I was saying.

“When you have this kind of iconic presence in front of you and they are humble enough to listen to you, wait for you to explain - even when you have problems with the language - try to catch your words to create a bigger idea, it impressed me a lot.”

Maestre insists he is not the type of coach to demand particular targets from his executives. He is perfectly happy with what he has been given to work with. Now, he need only solve the jigsaw.

Quite simply, that means building on last season’s strengths; he cites a solid defence and patching weaknesses - namely a lack of invention around the penalty area. Putellas’ presence as a no10 should help to that end.

“These are not my recruitments. I am here to work with the tools the club provides me,” he explains. “I really think we will be in a very good situation to push the standards in the league.

“I am here to reach in the shortest period possible, because I am very committed to reach the target the board has.

“These are my wishes. Now, let's see if we can reach the targets. But at least the pathway is settled, and everyone here, we are working towards that direction. So let's see.”