“Football is like a film,” Ernesto Valverde says, and sometimes it is an entire trilogy of them. The man who allayed fears that sequels are never any good by reminding everyone of The Godfather Part II when he returned to Bilbao for a second spell as coach of Athletic Club in 2013 and then proved it by leading to them to their first trophy in 31 years has gone and done it again. If Part II was even better than the original, the player they called “The Ant” becoming the only manager who could match what he had achieved first time round, Part III of his San Mames saga might be the best yet, Valverde back to take them where they have never been, not even with him.
When Valverde rejoined Athletic in the summer of 2022, his last job had ended with him being sacked by Barcelona, he had not worked for 30 months and he signed for a single season. But at least he was home, among those who appreciated him; besides, he insisted, it was an adventure – and it has been excellent. Eighth in the league – as high as Athletic had been since he was last there – and within four minutes of the Copa del Rey final in his first season, a year on and with his contract extended, this season they did get there, putting four past Barcelona and Atlético Madrid en route to April’s final against Mallorca in Seville. Then this Saturday, they got two more to defeat Alavés and move into fourth – well-placed to qualify for the Champions League for the third time and the first since way back when the manager was, well, him.
Victory hadn’t come easily but there is something about Athletic: an inevitability, an irresistibility. In their last home game before the final, a last chance to bid them good luck, for half an hour Alavés had been the better team and had won a penalty at 0-0. But Unai Simón made a sensational save and 40 seconds later Nico Williams, who had given away the spot-kick, set up Gorka Guruzeta to score. “That minute determined the game,” Valverde said. Athletic took control, Iñaki Williams (accidentally) setting up Guruzeta for a second, and by the end the place was rocking, San Mames serenading their players off to Seville. “I enjoyed it a lot, especially when it finished,” Valverde said.
He wasn’t the only one, and Saturday wasn’t a one-off. There may be no team as fun to watch right now, no one faster, nor more insistent; no stadium in which what happens on the pitch feels so linked to what happens in the stands, noisy and relentless. As El Correo Vasco put it: “At San Mames every game is a party these days. Supporters can’t remember anything like this for 40 years; they’re recovering a lost feeling, like something from another era; a childhood memory for those in their 50s and 60s.”
This is special, that’s for sure. Although Athletic won the Super Cup in 2015 and 2021, they haven’t won a major trophy since the Copa del Rey in 1984. Forty years have passed, an entire generation, and nor is it just the cup: “It’s not easy not to think about the final,” Valverde admitted, but they had to try because there are other targets too. “We’re not renouncing anything, and that includes the Champions League,” the coach said last week. “We have to aspire to fourth place,” goalkeeper Simón said seven days on. If they can get there, it would be huge: Athletic’s Basque-only policy is known now, almost normalised, but it is worth a reminder once in a while: a team limited to players from a region that accounts for less than 8% of the Spanish population is now fighting for a place in the fiercest, most global, most capitalist competition of them all.
They’re doing it in style too. Unbeaten at San Mames since the opening night, outscoring every other team in every other home, Athletic have won 11 of their last 12 matches at home and the one draw was against Barcelona three days after playing extra time in the semi-final. No wonder the sporting director says: “The fans are happy, and it’s not just results: it’s the way they play: vertical, aggressive.” On Saturday, the Alavés coach Luis García admitted they “flatten” you. “They’re spectacular,” said the visiting defender Ander Guevara. “We try to be a nightmare for opponents,” Valverde says. No one plays higher or more intensely. And if that was true last year too, now there is an efficiency to go with it.
All across the team they are flying. There are five Athletic players in the Spain squad. Dani Vivian and Aitor Paredes have played more games than any centre-back partnership in primera. One day Óscar de Marcos will get tired, but not today. Midfielder Íñigo Ruiz de Galarreta has returned, 10 years, seven clubs and three cruciate ligament tears after making his Athletic debut in 2012, and looks the player they always hoped he might be. Oihan Sancet has provided six assists. Simón is having a “terrifying” season, Guruzeta said, and he isn’t far behind himself. “Well,” the striker says, “if I don’t believe in me, we’re screwed.”
Athletic Bilbao 2-0 Alavés, Atlético Madrid 0-3 Barcelona, Getafe 1-0 Girona, Las Palmas 0-1 Almería, Mallorca 1-0 Granada, Osasuna 2-4 Real Madrid, Rayo Vallecano 2-0 Real Betis, Real Sociedad 2-0 Cádiz, Sevilla 1-2 Celta Vigo, Villarreal 1-0 Valencia
An academy product far from sure he would make it, Guruzeta returned to Athletic last summer after two successive relegations from the second division; now, teammate Iñigo Lekue insists, “everything he touches is a goal”, those two on Saturday taking him to 13 in primera, just three off the Pichichi. It’s not even about the goals, either: teammates liken him to Karim Benzema, as much a facilitator as a finisher. Iñaki Williams, playing on the right, has nine, on course to get as many as he ever did in the middle. He might be La Liga’s best winger, if it wasn’t for his brother on the other side: he and Nico are pretty much the best thing in Spain. Together, all of them might be, led by Valverde. “Ernesto is the boss, and is always right; he gets the best version out of all of us,” Iñaki Williams says.
A double winner and virtually a deity in Greece, when Valverde was sacked by Barcelona in January 2020, he left having overcome the crisis to win two league titles, the first of them amid the coming storm. He also left with the club still top of the table, the whole thing soon crashing down in his absence. He returned home, in the heart of Bilbao. For a while, he wanted to clear his head, escape it all. He cycled, played guitar in his band, took photos. He exhibited his pictures, published them too, but promoting his work wasn’t something he was keen on and never has been, which might not have always been good for him. Few have won so much and made so little noise about it. “I would like to come bouncing in here, but it just doesn’t come out,” he said after the Cup semi-final against Atlético. “Maybe I’ll do cartwheels out.”
When Athletic called presidential elections just under two years ago, new coaches invariably central to the campaign, Valverde initially kept out of it; choosing a candidate would contribute to division, and anyway he could see no reason not to continue with Marcelino García Toral. He neither sought nor needed to make a pitch: Athletic knew where to find him if they ever needed him. When he did finally agree, he did so with two candidates, a consensus choice. A third candidate had presented Marcelo Bielsa; Valverde was the only man on earth who could have beaten him. “Ernesto is the best coach Athletic could have,” Ander Herrera says.
“What Athletic means in Bilbao, Vizcaya, I have not seen anywhere,” Valverde says, and that connection is clear, while he admits that there is stress, a tension you are inevitably drawn into. And yet it is partly the calmness, that capacity to relativise it all, that defines him, the ability to sail through the storm and the bullshit. “It feels like ‘bloody hell it’s the end of the world if we don’t win’ and on Monday life carries on,” he says. “Tomorrow the sun comes out.” Players appreciate it. “He’s not a pain in the arse,” Herrera says. “He only gives importance to the things that are truly important. He’s a normal person.” As for Iñaki Williams, he says: “what can I say about Ernesto? His numbers speak for himself.”
Those are numbers which no one can match, except him, starting with three episodes, each better than the last. Athletic are fourth; they have only finished there once before this century, and that was with him. They have only been fifth twice, and so were both of those. In 25 years they have been to the Champions League just once, and so was that. One of their two Super Cups is his. They have won no major trophies and now they stand 90 minutes from a first since 1984, an entire generation ago, and nine games from the biggest competition of all. No there is nothing done, not yet, two huge steps yet to be taken, but it’s close. So much for sequels being no good. “I like all of the Godfathers,” Valverde says. “The first was good, so was the second. The third? Maybe, I don’t know. We’re going to try to make sure that is too.”
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Real Madrid | 29 | 44 | 72 |
| 2 | Barcelona | 29 | 26 | 64 |
| 3 | Girona | 29 | 25 | 62 |
| 4 | Athletic Bilbao | 29 | 24 | 56 |
| 5 | Atletico Madrid | 29 | 20 | 55 |
| 6 | Real Sociedad | 29 | 11 | 46 |
| 7 | Real Betis | 29 | 1 | 42 |
| 8 | Valencia | 28 | 0 | 40 |
| 9 | Villarreal | 29 | -4 | 38 |
| 10 | Getafe | 29 | -5 | 38 |
| 11 | Las Palmas | 29 | -3 | 37 |
| 12 | Osasuna | 29 | -10 | 36 |
| 13 | Alaves | 29 | -9 | 32 |
| 14 | Mallorca | 29 | -10 | 30 |
| 15 | Rayo Vallecano | 29 | -13 | 29 |
| 16 | Sevilla | 29 | -8 | 28 |
| 17 | Celta Vigo | 29 | -12 | 27 |
| 18 | Cadiz | 29 | -20 | 22 |
| 19 | Granada | 28 | -28 | 14 |
| 20 | Almeria | 29 | -29 | 13 |
