In Spanish football, there is no bigger disappointment this season than Athletic Bilbao. Marcelo Bielsa’s youthful team wowed Europe last season with its mix of speed and creativity in attack that led it to a pair of milestone wins over Manchester United and to within 90 minutes of two pieces of coveted silverware.
After blazing to the finals in both the Europa league and Spain’s Copa del Rey last spring, the rising expectations were for Bilbao to be fighting for titles and honing its sparkling version of the beautiful game in its second season under its unorthodox Argentine manager. How wrong that hopeful forecast has proven to be. A year later Bilbao has long since flopped out of both cup competitions and needs to wake up and win some Spanish league matches if it doesn’t want to find itself caught in a late-season fight to stay in the top flight.
To make matters worse, Bilbao is set to demolish its San Mames Stadium this summer just before its 100th anniversary and replace it with a bigger venue.
An ignominious scramble to avoid relegation wasn’t exactly the way the club had imagined saying goodbye to its cherished grounds, affectionately known as “The Cathedral” throughout Spain. But one win in its last six matches has left it seven points above the drop with five rounds to go. “We dream about giving The Cathedral the farewell it deserves,” 20-year-old Bilbao midfielder Iker Muniain said.
After a 2-2 draw at home to Barcelona Saturday, Bilbao has just two more chances to do so. Everything looked rosy for Bilbao last year. Bielsa’s scheme of having his players man-marking all over the pitch to create an up-tempo pace with wave after wave breaking against the rival’s area had found its perfect match in Bilbao’s talented generation of homegrown players. Bilbao, in short, was able to show the world that it was able to play attractive football without relying on the transfer market and staying true to its tradition of only fielding players from the Basque Country region of northern Spain or its adjoining provinces.
But things started to fall apart when the team’s attitude turned sour after losing the Europa league final to Atletico Madrid and the Copa del Rey to Barcelona.
Midfielder Javi Martinez and striker Fernando llorente both said they wanted out, with Martinez being plucked away by Bayern Munich. llorente, unfortunately for him and the club, stayed on, only to become a source of trouble stuck on the bench. He is now set to walk away for free to join Juventus when his contract ends in June. But Bilbao was more than just those two Spain internationals. It was a complete unit capable of running rivals over. This season, they have played more like a group of petulant teenagers. “I don’t want to look for excuses, because if we are having a mediocre to sub-par season it is completely our fault,” Ander said last week. “We are the same team from last year that proved to be one of the best in Europe. We can only find the explanation perhaps in that, in certain moments, we would have liked the talk to be about football rather than other things. The team wasn’t up to the challenge in many games.”
It isn’t for nothing that Bielsa is nicknamed “El loco” — The Crazy One — and that may be part of Bilbao’s success last season as well as its decline ever since. In his sometimes surreal news conferences he rarely resorts to the normal cliches, instead giving guru-like discourses on the sport in a subdued voice. By contrast, with his team he is anything but philosophical. He wants his players to play the game as intensely as he lives it on the sideline, where he squats in his tracksuit and barks commands.
Bielsa’s coaching style appears to have burned his players out after they fell short of winning trophies last year. Bilbao have lacked that extra effort they gave last campaign and that Bielsa’s designs demand. Without it, Bilbao has been sloppy on the ball and slow to help in defense, leading to problems above all in defense.