[EU] Europa League 2011/12 (23 Viewers)

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Nedvěd

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Far from idiotic, they are possibly the club I respect the most in world football. More clubs should be like them.
Good old days of football was like that, every league has it's domestic players, and every club had a majority of locals playing.
Just look at Celtic of 67.
 

acmilan

Plusvalenza Akbar
Nov 8, 2005
10,719
Furthermore, they're not only spanish, most of them are Basque, no? I didn't check but I would imagine so.
yes, Bilbao are well known for their "keep it in the family" philosophy. I think they are also the most hard-core of all basque teams in that regard.
 

Nedvěd

Guest
Furthermore, they're not only spanish, most of them are Basque, no? I didn't check but I would imagine so.
All of them. You can't play for Bilbao unless you are a Basque-born, your parents are Basque, or your family's origin is Basque. Like Amorebieta and Lizarazu.
 

ALC

Ohaulick
Oct 28, 2010
46,255
But fuck Juve doing the same :lol:
Juve has much higher standards than Bilbao though. And they're not Spanish, they're Basque. It would be like Juve only playing Turin born and bred peeps. Not to mention some of the players who have helped us become who we are weren't Italian.
 

Hængebøffer

Senior Member
Jun 4, 2009
25,185
Juve has much higher standards than Bilbao though. And they're not Spanish, they're Basque. It would be like Juve only playing Turin born and bred peeps. Not to mention some of the players who have helped us become who we are weren't Italian.
They're Spanish and you know what I meant.
 

Gian

COME HOME MOGGI
Apr 12, 2009
17,609
Nedvěd;3557989 said:
All of them. You can't play for Bilbao unless you are a Basque-born, your parents are Basque, or your family's origin is Basque. Like Amorebieta and Lizarazu.
You sure? Javi Martinez never looked to me as a Basque.
 

mukumsplau

Senior Member
Jul 9, 2008
4,442
Athletic Bilbao's Bielsa – obsessive and dangerous for United's chances

The Argentinian is called El Loco for his attention to detail but he has built the most exciting Athletic Bilbao team for decades

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Sid Lowe
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 March 2012 18.46 GMT
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Marcelo Bielsa, a former Argentina and Chile coach, has taken Athletic Bilbao into the Copa del Rey final in his first season in charge. Photograph: Ivan Alvarado/Reuters
The exchange was eloquent, a treatise on image and reality, the two faces of Marcelo Bielsa. It was played out at Estadio el Madrigal where Villarreal had just drawn 2-2 with Athletic Bilbao. Athletic's coach was addressing the media in his normal way – voice low, gaze lower – when he was asked about his odd touchline behaviour. Was it coincidence that after every Villarreal attack, he got up from his haunches and paced to the other side of his technical area, taking exactly 13 steps?

Bielsa did not look at his questioner. He never does. Staring down, he spoke in his usual slow monotone. "What is coincidence," he replied, "is that when there's such a nice game going on, someone spends time counting my paces."

They call the Argentinian El Loco and maybe they look too hard for madness. The way Athletic are playing, watching him not his team is absurd, yet it is hard not to be drawn to him. Bielsa is unusual, there is something addictive about his actions. Besides, person and professional are inseparable. The question is: is he really as mad as he is portrayed? "No," says the forward Iker Muniaín. "He is madder."

Bielsa arrived last summer and Athletic's players still have not completely worked him out. They have never seen anything like him and do not think they ever will. He is disconcerting, praising awful performances and bemoaning brilliant ones. Above all, he is intense. Compulsive. Obsessive. Mad. "He lives for football," the striker Fernando Llorente says. There are days, adds teh midfielder Javi Martínez, when he does not leave the Lezama training ground until the small hours. It is, he says, "insane".

When he arrived, Bielsa had watched their 38 league games last season, writing all the details on colour-coded spreadsheets. And that really is all the details – he says: "There are 36 different forms of communicating through a pass." He watches thousands of games, building a footballing taxonomy, like some kind of botanist. If a player does something new, he labels and stores it, learning from it. Teaching from it, too. Few are so didactic: he once drew on his shoes to show players exactly which part of their foot to use, wearing them for days after. Video sessions can last five hours and players joke that they do not dare make a mistake lest the green laser rest upon them and Bielsa demand a convincing explanation.

Training is intense, even when Bielsa takes children from the crowd and gets them to deliver instructions for him. Stopwatch in hand, he preaches high pressure, constantly interrupting and demonstrating. Gangs of players sprint from pole to pole, hunting as a coordinated pack, their errors revealed to them on a laptop. There is an almost childish wonder about Pep Guardiola's description of Athletic: "They all run up … and they all run down again. Up, down, up, down, up, down. They're fascinating."

All endeavour, no aesthetics? No. Bielsa, a former Argentina and Chile manager, has altered Athletic's historic identity as the most "English" of teams, teaching them in the words of one insider "not to be afraid of the ball any more". They have scored almost twice as many headers as any other team in Spain but where the ball used to be thumped into the area at the first opportunity, it is now being worked up the pitch. Only Madrid and Barcelona have completed more passes or scored more goals. "The style is totally different," says the defender Andoni Iraola; Llorente does the "opposite" of what he did before.

Synchronisation is fundamental, attacks automatic, movement mechanised, the pitch partitioned with tape, moves constructed and deconstructed piece by piece, passes made instantly. The circulation is constant. One exercise involves eight squares: two players cannot occupy the same space; if a team-mate enters your square, you vacate it. Crossing and shooting exercises, following specific, interchanging "passageways", do not end with the shot but with players sprinting back into their starting positions. Defence and attack are not separate.

"A man with new ideas is mad until he succeeds," Bielsa notes. Athletic did not win in their first five games as they struggled to assimilate new ideas; since then, they have lost only three of 21 and are one point from the Champions League places, their best finish for 13 years on the cards.

They are in the Copa del Rey final, seeking a first trophy in 28 years, and supporters are enjoying their football like never before. The sparkle in the eye of players, the sheer number of fans travelling to England – Old Trafford's highest ever away contingent – reveals what facing Manchester United means.

A few weeks ago, Bielsa was stopped by a group of kids who asked him to sign their sticker album. He said no, he had a better idea. He took the album off them and told them to meet him the following day, same place, same time. When he turned up 24 hours later, the entire team had signed the album:beer:. Not just any team: El Loco's team, the most exciting Athletic have had in three decades.
 

Enron

Tickle Me
Moderator
Oct 11, 2005
75,456
That's bad ass.

---------- Post added 08.03.2012 at 21:36 ----------

Oh and I think Sociedad is the Basque that decided to let foreigners play a few years back.
 

JuveJay

Senior Signor
Moderator
Mar 6, 2007
74,011
I've got a friend in San Sebastian who is an Athletic Bilbao fan, basically the players are nearly all the the Basque Country, but also those with direct family and ties to the region can play. It's very important for their people, what Barcelona think they have but only have a watered down version of.
 
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