Prologue: Part Twenty-Two

When you are managing a team, the best reaction to a loss is not just a victory but the manner of a victory that demonstrates learning from the previous failures. 

Against Naxara, with an extra 500 fans – a designated fan day had been called – we righted an awful lot of wrongs with a strong showing. We conceded a soft goal, as has been the case a lot this season, and an area we will need to work on – both me, as a manager, and this team, whatever the direction that it takes but our response, despite not creating a huge amount of xG was a fearless, fluid attacking show that constantly put our visitors under intense pressure.

That victory keeps us in seventh and our unlikely shot at the playoffs alive: Basconia (bottom) are yet to come and we face Sestao River (3rd), Deportivo Aragon (8th) and Ejea (17th) in our remaining fixtures, knowing that we need some help to jump the required number of places.

Gorka Agirre, from the famed Athletic Club academy, has been nothing short of an inspiration for me, retraining himself as a playmaking winger and showing incredible development in his attacking statistics since I took charge of the club. Gorka had one goal and two assists by December but, since then, has recorded an average rating of 7.61 across my twelve games at the club, having a hand in thirteen goals in that time. What is most impressive are how much the other statistics have improved, as opposed to him just being there for the tap in or the last pass before the goal. 

Sitting narrower, holding up play and roaming from his wide left berth have meant that Agirre is, essentially, a free man. Combine that with an actual free role – Morales – and the interplay between the two of them is fluid and exciting. Between them, there has been just three occasions since I took charge whereby one of them hasn’t found the back of the net.

Whilst his sixteen goal contributions from 10.19 xG/A is an overachievement, I am confident that he can keep this up for the remainder of the season. He has been an integral part of our climb up the table and something that I am sure I will continue to lean on across my managerial career: the boldness to move and change a player based on what I think is right for the team.

Prologue: Part Twenty-Three

Sometimes performances, score lines and chances don’t all align.

Today, against Basconia – Athletic’s third team – a side already relegated, were were absolutely incredible. We demanded passion and structure defensively with fluid attacking patterns and delivered all of that. It is, sadly, clear to see why Basconia struggle so much – their defence is porous and their 3-4-2-1 shape allows huge swathes of space from their hot headed midfielders, who chased shadows most of the game. Yet their keeper played a blinder, making numerous high quality saves, thwarting our attackers from, quite literally, scoring a hatful. 

In a game between the league’s top scorers, us, and the league’s leakiest defence, our hosts, goals were pretty much expected. Yet, we’ll come away with confidence in our performance, further alignment to our vision and a retention of our seventh place in the table.

As I look forward, the squad of players at the club beyond the 30th June is slim and I worry about the state that I will be leaving the club in – over €1m in debt and just about ten players, regardless of anyone who is promoted from the youth setup. Talks have been underway about allowing me a small amount of time in the post-season to ensure that the team enter the 26/27 campaign with, at least, a squad. I have listened but have yet to make a decision on that, yet.

Prologue: Party Twenty-Four

There’s a kind of beauty in things that aren’t supposed to last. The quiet before the whistle. The last ten minutes before sunset. The hush of the dressing room before the noise starts. Lately, I’ve started to fear I’m falling in love with something I was never meant to keep.

When I arrived in Gernika in December, I told myself this would be short. A few months. A healing job. A bridge between grief and purpose. I would work, rebuild, and move on. That was the plan. But football – like life – doesn’t respect your tidy intentions. Now, with the season winding towards its end, I walk through this town and feel something I haven’t felt in years: belonging. The smell of rain on stone. The old men by the café arguing about formations from 1983. The children outside the school gates kicking a worn ball against the wall of the Casa de Juntas. This place has roots that pull at you.

When I stand on the touchline at Urbieta, I can feel the weight of them. Not as pressure, but as presence. The air is thick with memory here – the sirens of 1937, the shadows of the oak tree, the resilience that has lived in every generation since. To coach Gernika isn’t just to guide a team; it’s to enter a story that has survived fire.

And yet… I know this story isn’t mine to stay in.

My contract ends in June. That was the agreement. Clean, professional, simple. But now, when I imagine leaving, it feels like tearing a page out of something unfinished. We’ve built a team that reflects this place. Not perfect, but alive. Compact lines. Relentless energy. Collective courage. The things I’ve always believed in as a coach – those Basque values of order, defiance, and unity – they’ve taken form here. Watching the players press, recover, combine – it’s like seeing ideas made flesh.

Yesterday, after a 1-1 draw with Zaragoza’s B side, I walked home through the narrow streets. I realised then that Gernika wasn’t healing me – it was reminding me who I am. But here’s the problem: when something begins to feel like home, it’s harder to remember that you were never meant to stay.  I’ve been thinking a lot about my uncle Xabier, and those years in Switzerland. The long summers in Graubünden. The calm of the mountains. The sense that time didn’t need to be conquered there – only understood. Gernika has that same rhythm, though the air is heavier, more wounded, more alive. It’s as if the two places speak different dialects of the same language: silence and endurance.

Sometimes, late at night, I feel torn between them. In Switzerland, I learned patience, craft, discipline. In the Basque Country, I learned conviction, resistance, heart. And here, standing on the touchline of a club born from survival, I feel those two selves pulling at each other – the builder and the fighter. I’m starting to wonder if this tension is what defines me. Maybe that’s why I coach – to find a language that allows both truths to exist on the same field.

A friend asked me recently if I would stay, if the offer came. I didn’t answer. Not because I didn’t know – but because I was afraid that, for the first time, I might want to.

And yet, I also know myself too well. I know that comfort dulls hunger. That familiarity can soften the edges of ambition. Maybe what scares me most is that Gernika has given me peace – and peace has never been where I grow best.

I look at the table, at the statistics – ten wins from fourteen, thirty-two goals scored and eight conceded. Numbers that say one thing: control. But control is an illusion in football. You never really have it. You can only chase it for ninety minutes at a time, then let it go again.

That’s what this feels like – a team, a town, a moment I’ll have to let go of. But before I do, I want to leave something behind. Not a trophy. Not even a record. Just an idea – that we can play football with conviction, courage, and collective faith, even here in the muddy corners of Spain’s lower leagues. When the whistle blows on the final day, I’ll look up at the oak of Gernika and remind myself of something I’ve always believed: roots don’t mean staying still. They mean knowing where you began, so you can return stronger.

Maybe that’s all this is.

A return. A reminder.

And somewhere, far beyond these hills, the Alps are still waiting.

Prologue: Part Twenty-Five

There are matches you prepare for, and then there are matches that seem to prepare you.

The visit of Sestao River to Urbieta was one of those. 

We all knew what it meant before a ball was even kicked. We had to win – simple as that. A victory would keep us alive in the race for the playoffs; a draw, or worse, would close the door. But around here, nothing is ever simple.

Sestao are not just another opponent. They’re cut from the same Basque cloth – industrial, proud, resilient. A club from the steel heart of the left bank of the Nervión, born out of the shipyards and forges that once powered Bizkaia. Their people wear the smell of work like a badge. There’s something raw in their football – a kind of defiance that mirrors their town’s history. When they arrived at Urbieta, the air carried that tension you only feel in games that mean something beyond points. The stands filled early, faces painted with anxiety and pride. The red, green, and white flags waved behind the goal, the drums echoing through the narrow valley. You could smell the rain, the cut grass, the cigarette smoke curling above the tunnel.

For Gernika, it wasn’t just another fixture. It was proof. Proof that the last four months – the transformation, the belief, the surge up the table – had not been a mirage. Proof that this club, this small, humble institution of heart and history, could once again matter.

When I took the job in December, we were drifting. Quietly. Anonymously. Likely to be relegated without even a whimper.

The kind of team that lived between weekends, surviving each game rather than inhabiting it. Now, standing on the touchline, I could see something unrecognisable from that winter. The team had grown – not just in shape or understanding, but in soul. They pressed together, defended together, sufferedtogether. I looked around the ground and saw the same transformation in the stands. There was energy again – that old Gernika heartbeat. People believed. Not because we were favourites or fashionable, but because they saw themselves reflected in the effort. When the whistle blew, both teams tore into the match like it was personal. And perhaps it was. Basque derbies carry an unspoken code – we fight, but we fight as brothers. Rivals born of the same bloodline.

The first half was chaos wrapped in courage. Sestao pressed high, their lines sharp and disciplined. We countered through quick verticals, breaking their press with the calm of a side who had learned to trust each other. There were tackles that sounded like thunderclaps. Voices shouting in euskara and Spanish, colliding in the humid air.

In the 54th minute, we scored. The net rippled and Urbieta roared like a storm breaking over the valley. For a brief moment, everything felt possible again. But football has a way of humbling you just when you start to believe. Sestao found their rhythm – the same grinding, relentless rhythm that made them so difficult to face. A long throw, a flicked header, a rebound, and suddenly it was 1–1. From that point, it became a test of willpower. Both sides threw everything they had at the other – collisions, counters, and courage. We came close twice in stoppage time, the second chance flashing inches wide of the far post. When the final whistle went, I stood frozen for a second, the noise falling into silence.

A draw. And with it, the end of our playoff dream.

The players dropped to their knees. Some buried their faces in their shirts; others stared blankly at the grass. Around us, the crowd applauded – not out of pity, but out of pride. They knew what they had witnessed. As I walked across the pitch, I realised something: this wasn’t failure. Four months ago, we were a team without pulse, without purpose. Now, we had pushed one of the league’s hardest teams to the limit. We had filled the town with belief again.

In football, you measure progress in goals, points, tables. But there are deeper measures too – the sound of the crowd staying after the whistle, the way players linger on the field, the sight of kids wearing the club colours again. Those things don’t show up on the standings, but they tell you something’s been rebuilt. They felt the pain I was feeling and, what is more, they didn’t know what I knew; this was likely to be the last outing I would make at Urbieta, with my contract ending and our season ender away at Ejea.

After the match, I walked alone back through the streets of Gernika. The sun was setting behind Mount Oiz, painting the town gold. You could still hear the faint hum of conversation spilling from the bars – half pride, half heartbreak. At the bridge near the river, I stopped and looked at the water. It moved slowly, heavy from the spring rains, reflecting the orange sky. And I thought: maybe this is what rebuilding really looks like. You don’t arrive at success; you flow toward it, stubbornly, steadily, reshaping the stones as you pass.

The River came to Urbieta, and though they took our dream, they left us something greater – a sense of who we are again.

When I got home, I sat in silence for a while. The table said we had fallen short, but myheart told me that I was only just beginning.

Prologue: Part Twenty-Six

Asier Villanueva | Mario Gutierrez | Javier Zabala | Xabier Munoz | Iker Sanz | Ibon Garmendia

When the new generation walked into Urbieta this week – wide-eyed, quiet, hopeful – I felt something shift inside me. Maybe it was pride. Maybe it was envy. Maybe it was memory.

Watching them lace their boots on the cold concrete steps took me back to another time. To the Basque Country of the 1990s and early 2000s – a world that feels close enough to touch, but far enough away to hurt. Back then, football wasn’t a path. It was an escape.

I grew up in Zarautz, a town caught between the sea and the hills. Surfboards in the mornings, football in the evenings, always chasing something. Life wasn’t easy. Work was scarce, money came and went, and everyone knew someone who’d fallen into the traps that lined the streets – drugs, boredom, desperation. Football was the thread that kept so many of us from unravelling. We played anywhere we could find space – narrow streets with cracked tarmac, beaches at low tide, empty industrial lots where the goalposts were just two battered jackets. The ball was a miracle we shared between us, and every touch mattered because we didn’t know how long it would last. There were days when we’d walk hours to reach a training pitch. The bus fares added up, and sometimes we’d skip meals to save for them. I remember the smell of diesel on my jacket, the sound of boots knocking against the aisle floor as we headed inland for training. Rain, cold, exhaustion – none of it mattered. What mattered was that when you pulled that shirt over your head, even for the smallest of clubs, you became part of something.

The Basque game back then was brutal and beautiful in equal measure. Coaches didn’t talk about “positional play” or “transitional control.” They talked about heart. About how to run, how to press, how to play for the teammate next to you as if your own life depended on it. At the small clubs – Zarautz, Lagun Onak, Real Unión, Aurrerá – everything was raw. The pitches were uneven, the changing rooms smelled of mud and disinfectant, the footballs were half-flat by the end of the session. But there was fire. Every player knew he represented more than himself – he carried his town, his friends, his family. We didn’t dream of fame or contracts. We dreamed of earning the right to keep playing. Those years forged us. You learned resilience by getting kicked. You learned responsibility by sharing your only pair of boots with your younger brother. You learned humility because talent meant nothing without hunger. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t grim. It was pure.There was laughter in the struggle, beauty in the discipline. When the fog rolled down from the hills and the floodlights came on, the whole world felt contained within the white lines.

Now, decades later, I look at the academies – the pristine facilities, the GPS trackers, the data dashboards – and I can’t help but feel both admiration and distance. The professionalism is extraordinary. The pathways are clearer. The science is smarter. But sometimes I wonder if the game still hurts enough.

Because Basque football, at its core, isn’t built on talent. It’s built on suffering together. On working until your lungs burn. On trusting the collective over the individual. That’s what made the region’s academies – Athletic, Real Sociedad, Eibar, Alavés – into factories of identity rather than mere production lines. That’s what Clemente understood. What Emery refined. What Iraola channels now. It isn’t tactics that bind us; it’s character.

When I saw those young players arrive this week, I didn’t see the future of Gernika. I saw the continuation of a story older than any of us. The story of kids who choose football because it still offers something pure: belonging.

I stood by the touchline and watched their first touches – hesitant, eager, untidy. One mistimed pass, one heavy control, one burst of pace that made a coach smile. It wasn’t about scouting talent; it was about recognising intent. You can tell everything from how a player reacts to a mistake. Whether he hides, or whether he demands the ball again. And I thought about what I’d tell them, if I could reach that version of myself from twenty-five years ago:Don’t chase the dream. Chase the work.The work will define you.

The Basque Country has changed. There’s more opportunity now, more order, more comfort. The hills still hold the same mist, the towns still close their shutters on Sundays, but the fear of falling through the cracks isn’t as sharp as it was. And yet – the soul of the game remains. Passion. Determination. Drive. Teamwork. When we train, when we play, I tell the players: don’t just play football – express your roots through it. Because this game, for us, has never been about style or trophies. It’s about survival. About expression. About defiance.

As the sun set behind the oak of Gernika this evening, I lingered on the pitch long after everyone had gone. I looked at the empty goalposts and imagined those boys – not just as players, but as torchbearers. Not of a club, but of a culture. They don’t know yet what this game will demand of them. The early mornings, the pain, the rejections. But if they stay true to the Basque virtues – humility, courage, community – then they’ll carry something far more valuable than a career.

They’ll carry the soul of who we are