Athletic Bilbao – Osasuna
The Navarrese homegrown players will try to prevent the ‘rojillos’ from reaching the second Cup final in their history 18 years later
The mother of Jagoba Arrasate he wanted his son to return to teaching. To the Elgoibar school, where he taught sixth-grade children, instead of running around as a football coach. In the end he didn’t listen to her, although on June 27, 1987 he had no other choice. Joseba was nine years old and didn’t let him get on the bus who left his town, Mutriku (Guipúzcoa), heading to Zaragoza, where Real Sociedad would beat Atlético de Madrid in the Copa del Rey final. “I spent a week without speaking to him,” says Joseba. This time he does not intend to miss it.
Professor Arrasate’s leave of absence is about to put Osasuna in a Cup final, the second in its history, 18 years later. Ez Abde was three years old and lived in Beni Mellal, a city in the center of Morocco, where little should be said about Osasuna, when a Betis goal in extra time left them without their first Copa del Rey. Now, his goal at El Sadar against Athletic Bilbao more than a month ago may be worth planting them in the final at La Cartuja on May 6.
And it better come to them, because since that goal, Osasuna has four and a half games without seeing the door. More than 400 minutes. His pichichi, the Argentine Chimy Avila, with eight goals between the League and the Cup, has not scored since January. And although he was ruled out for San Mamés due to a soleus injury in his left leg, he has finally entered the squad. Chimy has reconciled with the stands after becoming a photo with a Vox t-shirt. He has just sneaked into a pre-list of the new Spanish coach, Louis of the Sourceand it sounds for Simeone’s Atlético next season.
Professor Arrasate entrusts the Cup to Sergio Herrera, hero in the penalty shootout in the last tie against Betis. Athletic does not want to see him in that position, because of the four penalties that have been taken this season in the League, he has saved three, one of them Karim Benzema. In fact, of the five penalties that Benzema has missed throughout his career in the Spanish League, the Osasuna goalkeeper has saved three, two in the same game, although Herrera takes credit for it: “The perfect penalty is impossible to stop” .
To avoid the feat, the rojillos will have friendly fire in front of them. If Osasuna has eight Navarrese on the squad, Athletic has five, all in offensive positions: Muniain, Berenguer, Nico Williams, Raúl García and Oihan Sancet, who aspire to become their executioners. Of them, only Muniain did not at some point pass through the hands, and especially through the eyes, of Enrique Martin Monreal, former player for a decade, former coach of the first team in First and Second, of its subsidiaries, and even director of grassroots football.
Martín does not believe that Osasuna is robbed by the players from the youth academy, especially to go to San Mamés: «This animosity towards Athletic has existed for a long time, and I really do not understand itif they do not steal them from us, they are the ones who decide to leave». And he remembers a meeting with Sancet’s parents, trying to convince them: «’Thank you for everything, Enrique, really, but we are very clear that we are going to Bilbao,’ they told me. In the end, to retain the home players you have to go through the box. Why do you pay to bring a guy from outside and not to retain the one who is already inside?
Martín Monreal participated as a player in one of the four Cup semifinals in which Osasuna played throughout its history. The one from 1987/88, when he lost to Barça in Linekerand shared the front with a certain Michael Robinson. “How he would have liked to experience this today!” Martín remembers.
Pamplona is paralyzed these days because, “although they say that Barça is more than a club, Osasuna is more”, due to things like “every weekend grandma goes to ask how they turned outalthough I have never seen a game and do not know if the ball is square or round.
Martín predicts for today “a long game, perhaps with extension.” And he can’t help but imagine himself in the locker room with the players, to whom he would say before jumping onto the field: “That they don’t think about anything, to prevent them from getting into the funk, because it’sl 90% have not been seen in one of these and probably won’t even be seen.” The former Osasuna coach sees an advantage that the players have “the illusion of passing, and not the obligation that Athletic has for being who it is.” And he celebrates that they won in Pamplona 1-0 and not 2-0, “so that the team does not leave relaxed.”
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