I was there!

Yes, I was there. I was in Old Trafford on March 8th, 2012. I was one of the 8.000 supporters of Athletic Club Bilbao in Manchester ready to lose our voice cheering our team. It was a special occasion. It was an Europa League match: Manchester United – Athletic Club. For some of us it was an encounter with the history of football.

Some people told me that we are crazy. They don’t understand why lose a working day, why make a boring, tiring, flash trip to a city 1.500 km away from our home, but this is the story of a feeling and: I was there!

The relationship between  Athletic Club Bilbao and English Football comes from the ends of 19th Century when workers from England arrived in Bilbao to work in iron mines and shipyards. The British workers brought with them the game of football and in the early 1890s these workers formed Bilbao Football Club.

Also the club colours come from a funny story of a Basque student from Bilbao named Juan Elorduy who was required to buy new shirts for the team. He couldn’t find the white and blue shirts that were the first colours but he bought 50 new shirts from Southampton FC that matched the colours of the City of Bilbao. It was in 1909, after that the official colours are red and white.

One hundred years later Athletic Club Bilbao has become a very special feeling for people in Bilbao and other places.

As I said before the match on March 8th, 2012 was an encounter with history but also a match between two different ways of managing a sports club in XXI Century. Nowadays Manchester United is a global brand with a value of $1.86 billion, players from all around the world and more than 75 million fans worldwide. Athletic Club Bilbao is a club true to the tradition of home grown players, with difficulties in maintaining their historical status (4th best team in the ranking of spanish Liga) but with deep roots in Basque society. So for us it was like the David and Goliath combat and we had to help our players to find and recover the best of themselves.

And it happened. The “small” beat the “big” one. Bielsa‘s pupils played as ever and we were offered one of the best games we’ve ever seen and they won in Old Trafford.

I will never forget this match. The trip to Manchester was crazy but I think you need to do these crazy things at least once in life. It was so exciting that I even dropped a few tears. Perhaps you don’t understand these emotions. Maybe you have to see this video first, after that I think you will understand.