Unai López untangles the Ipurua knot

Football, always capricious, has these things.

Now that there is so much talk about

and his chances (still very much alive) of returning to Athletic seven years after his departure, Unai López goes and does what he had never done in his life.

In his 62 previous games with the red and white shirt, the San Sebastian midfielder had only scored one goal, against Valladolid in the last game prior to the pandemic break.

Well, this Sunday, in a scenario as harsh as Ipurua, he scored two at a stroke, giving Athletic their first victory of the season.

[1-2: Narration and statistics]

The rojiblanco team needed it to scare away the ghosts inherited from the end of last season and enhanced in the first game of the season, resolved with

.

It was not a convincing victory in excess, but it is three points after all, which deserved more than an Eibar that continues to cast many doubts.

There is still a week of market left and it seems that the future of gunsmiths this season will depend a lot on the success they have these days.

Because it seems clear that the Mendilibar squad, right now, still lacks quality.

The possession data, so common in football analysis in recent times, were in this case quite relative.

In reality, the ball spent most of the time in indefinite limbo, especially in the first hour of the meeting.

He was neither a gunsmith nor a Bilbao man, quite the opposite.

A suspicious element whose movements were measured more in decameters than in centimeters, continuously enjoying a privileged view of the cloudy sky of Eibar.

On one occasion, even from what was outside the domain of the field, the result of a

shot

that ended up in Ipurua street that surrounds the armero stadium.

The game, in short, was not pretty to watch, because precision with the ball is not exactly the strength of either team.

The first half passed rarely and generally of poor quality.

Eibar did put together an interesting pair, but Kike García missed both on goal, when he already lacked opposition to beat Simón.

Until in the midst of such football darkness, Athletic managed to turn on the spotlights.

It happened five minutes before the break, in a counterattack in which Morcillo drove

.

The '9' had the pause that he lacks so many times and served the ball to Unai López, who from the front put together a low right that slipped into Dmitrovic's goal after hitting the post.

Kike Garcia

The provisional 0-1 satisfied Garitano, of course, but not Mendilibar, who came to the conclusion that he had to intervene at halftime so that Eibar had a chance of winning the match.

So he changed the scheme by entering a forward, Quique, for a midfielder, Recio, and substituted one winger for another, Pedro León for Kadzior.

The bet paid off immediately, albeit indirectly.

Three minutes after the restart, a corner thrown by the Murcian was headed to goal by Kike García before the passivity of Núñez, who started this Sunday due to Yeray's injury.

The meeting thus returned to its starting point, which led Garitano to make a key move.

He is not a coach with a special ability to change games from the bench, but it is fair to admit that he succeeded in Ipurua.

He brought the young Morcillo and

, who teamed with Williams pointed, with both looking balls to the space between the central and lateral.

A maneuver that gave Athletic new energy and flattened Eibar, practically unprecedented in attack in the final half hour of the game.

Ten minutes after the change, the rojiblancos scored their second goal, after a center by Villalibre finished off by Williams, but the VAR canceled it for offside of the first of them.

The lines shown by the television production cast more doubts than they cleared.

It seemed the clash condemned to be resolved with a draw, until

.

A long play by Athletic culminated in a cross by Capa that the midfielder, again after passing through the post, turned into the second and final goal for Gaizka Garitano's team.

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