A great lover of photography since his time as a player in Barcelona, where he enrolled in the IEFC, Ernesto Valverde is missing a photo. It is a snapshot that has been waiting for several generations. A capture that resists 40 years, which Athletic has gone without lifting a Copa del Rey. Viandar de la Vera won it with Barcelona as a player (1990, against Madrid, despite the fact that he remained on the Mestalla bench) and as a coach (2018).
The coach, who usually shoots with black and white reels, needs to color the history of Athletic, who does not want to continue seeing Endika's goal with nostalgia, in sepia tones. It has rained too much. Valverde himself was 20 years old and started at Alavés in Second B.
You could almost say that it has flooded in Ibagaine and San Mamés, the old and the new. Especially since since then, Athletic has had six consecutive finals with defeat in the cup tournament, its fetish. Valverde has in his hand and on his blackboard the click so that he does not stop being one, to catch the fall in love again.
“We dreamed of being here since the beginning of the season, but in the end we are a team that in the 21st century has lost the five finals it has played in. So when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose,” the coach explained about possible excess pressure for his players.
About 3,000 fans said goodbye to the Athletic bus when it went from Lezama to the airport to fly to Seville, where, by the way, Valverde lost a Cup final with Barça, in 2019. Although it was not in the La Cartuja stadium, but in Villamarín against Valencia.
More than 20 years after his debut on the red and white bench, game 389 is perhaps the most relevant. “Of course it is important to me. I know what this game means to everyone if we can win. Right now it is the most important,” he confessed. In this third stage – his contract is ending and has not yet been renewed – Valverde has worked in silence, in his own way, and has carried out a great replacement with Paredes, Beñat Prados and Guruzeta, all youngsters from the quarry.
It was in Vitoria, at Alavés, where he met López Rekarte, another friend, with whom in the summer of 1996 they embarked on their last stop as footballers. The full-back and the winger landed in an ambitious Second Division project... Mallorca. The forward didn't play much – seven games as a starter – and only scored three goals, but he hung up his boots at a young age (33 years old) with promotion in his bag. From there, it can be considered the golden stage of his rival.
Thanks for that? Surely not, but it turns out that it is a team that Valverde is good at, since they have not lost against the vermillions since 2006. “I wouldn't mind saying that we are favorites if they gave me a goal. Since they are not going to give it to me, I have no intention of motivating the other party,” he said, eager to give an image of tranquility, like the good portraitist that he is.
After an entire career on the Spanish bench, Javier Aguirre today, at 65 years old, at retirement age, has a new option of adding the first Copa del Rey to his resume. He had to work at Zaragoza, Espanyol and Leganés. He tasted the elite, although without success, at Atlético. And at Osasuna he was close in 2005, with six minutes left in extra time, of winning a Cup that traveled to the Betis showcases. Now, after 15 years competing in Spain, football has given him revenge in Mallorca. “I add more relegations than titles,” said the Mexican recently, who did make his fortune in his country with three titles.
With or without winding, Aguirre's teams have personality, and it has been no less with the Mallorcans, rocky and with verticality as their flag. “The team is very excited. We did not intend to be in the final, it was not the project,” he indicated yesterday before the duel in La Cartuja.
In a football flooded with clichés and technicalities, Aguirre is the last refuge of spontaneity, of the people's vocabulary. “You already know me. I don't do scripts. If a good speech comes out, it will be natural. You can't act. If you don't speak from the heart, you're screwed,” he said about how he will motivate his students before facing Athletic, “a team with a lot of speed that inoculates you if you make a mistake.” The coach, “calm” before the challenge, will not only play against a team that will force his team to play “an almost perfect game,” but he will also face his roots. “I grew up in a Basque house in Mexico. There were Athletic posters and we listened to the games on the radio. We looked at the results in the newspaper. My brothers came one summer and stayed in Gernika, my mother's town, for seven years. They came back being more Athletic players,” the coach, who is nicknamed the Basque for a reason, recalled his childhood.
Aguirre is the visible face of a project that has been improving in recent years, since the coach worked a miracle by saving the Vermillions from relegation in the final nine rounds of the League of the 2021-22 season. “Aguirre is very important, he has collaborated a lot in the growth of the club,” the sports director of the Balearic entity, Pablo Ortells, explains to La Vanguardia. Not so long ago Mallorca was in a difficult situation, in Second B in 2017 and in bankruptcy. “We come from years of instability. The Cup is candy. The first thing is to stabilize ourselves in First Division and that will allow us to take a leap. “We are ambitious, but without losing perspective,” added the sports official, who arrived on the island in April 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. In 2016, the seed of the future was sown with the purchase of the club by a group of investors, including Steve Nash, NBA MVP in 2005 and 2006, and former tennis player Andy Kohlberg, who later became maximum shareholder and current president. After eight years of that bet, Mallorca has no financial debt and today could win the third title in its history.
