Luis Núñez-Villavearán
Updated Sunday, April 7, 2024-22:40
Copa del Rey Xabi Alonso, Mendilibar, Arteta... Euskadi shines in Europe: "What marks the imprint of Basque football is its competitiveness"
Soccer The almost assumed departure of Nico Williams, a star far from the sport
When
Iker Muniain
lifted the Copa del Rey trophy in La Cartuja there must have been one thought that couldn't get out of his head. Yesterday, the captain, before getting on the bus on the way to the airport, crossed out the number 24 that was on the vehicle with spray paint and changed it to 25. There are 25 Athletic Cups, according to the club; 24 is recognized by the Spanish Federation. They claim the one won in 1902 under the name of Vizcaya in a tournament that celebrated the coming of age of
King Alfonso XIII
. "It's an old romance," says
Txtexu Lertxundi
, former president of the club.
Lertxundi reveals that
Pedro Aurtenetxe
, his predecessor and one of Athletic's most successful presidents, had prepared a gift for
King Juan Carlos
in the event that they reissued the 1984 Cup title. This present was a commemoration of the 25 trophies. But in the 1985 final, the team lost to Atlético de Madrid. "If we had won and the King had accepted the gift, let's see if the RFEF would have had the nerve not to admit that it was the 25th title."
Muniain and number 25 on the Athletic bus.David ArjonaEFE
Today that still does not happen, but to the Athletic fans, more than 100,000 who were stuck on Sunday in serious delays to return from Seville to Bilbao, it does not matter to them. "It happened to us in our final that we beat Barça, there were 80% of red and white flags in Madrid and that's when we started to win the final," former Athletic footballer
Manu Sarabia
remembers with nostalgia .
The movement of Bilbao fans was massive, ignoring statistics, but embracing history. "What happened in Seville was a global cataclysm," highlights
Lertxundi
. In the last 11 years, Athletic had reached nine finals before, five of them Cup finals, all of which it had lost. Until the 10th came and with it the cup triumph. "I don't like to compare, but it could be like the Champions League for Madrid. Athletic can't go one way and the Cup go the other, they are the same path," says
Sarabia
.
History, on the other hand, helped them. Athletic wins the
Cup
every 40 years, and 2024, like 1904, 1944 and 1984 before, was the year to do it. It is a romance, an eternal passion. "The passion in Vizcaya is not football, it is Athletic," says
Carlos Iturgaiz
, former president of the Basque PP, a great fan of the Bilbao team.
Valverde, with the trophy.CRISTINA QUICLERAFP
The difference between these previous titles, as
Txetxu Lertxundi
highlights, could be summarized in the
Bosman Law
, a revolution in the world of football, but which did not alter Athletic's philosophy even in its darkest years, when the team saved the category in the last game of the 2006-07 season. "There were difficult moments with the youth team, when they were on the verge of being relegated and the philosophy was not changed at all," points out
Iturgaiz
.
Unique philosophy
The politician refers to the philosophy of betting on Basque players or players trained in the Basque youth system. In an increasingly globalized world and in which the entry of foreign capital makes it even more difficult to maintain the level. "Any title we can achieve is a tremendous merit for the club's philosophy. The radius of action is increasingly limited, so the merit is greater," explains
Sarabia
.
It is true that, in the case of Athletic, as Iturgaiz evokes using a metaphor regarding wine: "A harvest that must be taken advantage of." What began with
Muniain
and
De Marcos
is improved with the
Williams brothers
, among others. "This generation of Athletic is one of the best, but the new Cup format, a single match and field draw, gives us more possibilities, as happened with Barcelona in the quarterfinals. Barça, Madrid and Atlético are world teams," he concludes
Lertxundi
.