The Quality of Madness: FULLY UPDATED by Tim Rich

Author:Tim Rich [Rich, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2020-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

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I cannot lie to you; in the final months we couldn’t even move. Our legs said ‘stop’. We always used to play with the same players and we were not at our best in the finals. We were a completely different team to the one that we had been before because, to be honest, we were physically fucked. We couldn’t run any more. We played, I think, sixty-five games that season – thirty-eight in the league, a cup final in Spain and the Europa League final. If you see the stats, Marcelo Bielsa used to play the same team so you can imagine how we finished that season. I am not blaming the manager because he did amazingly for us and we should be very thankful because of the beautiful football but in the last month we couldn’t even move and that is the reality.

The words are Ander Herrera’s, spoken in an interview with the journalist Graham Hunter. They appear a damning testimony of how Athletic Bilbao collapsed as the season reached its climax. They had burned brilliantly and brightly but, at the end, they burned out. In the Europa League the flames flickered almost until the end. In the quarter-finals against Schalke they produced a performance that was the equal of the 3–2 victory at Old Trafford. Schalke had reached the semi-finals of the Champions League the season before and with an attack led by Raúl and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar they went on to finish third in the Bundesliga this season.

The first leg was in Gelsenkirchen and was a better match than the one at Old Trafford because Schalke, unlike Manchester United, matched Athletic Bilbao blow for blow.

Raúl scored twice, the first a pure striker’s goal, stolen at the near post, then a superlative volley delivered from the edge of the area. In the return fixture at the San Mamés, Raúl scored his seventy-seventh and final European goal. The climax of the first leg was astonishing. Athletic scored three in the final twenty minutes. Huntelaar struck the post and Raúl might have had a hat-trick but it was the sight of Athletic breaking away in the ninety-third minute, still running, still pressing, with Iker Muniain driving in the fourth, that decided everything. It was the only goal Bielsa celebrated, punching the air as ball hit net. It was 4–2 and Schalke would have to win by three clear goals in Bilbao. They scored twice but so, too, did Athletic. They would play Sporting Lisbon in the semi-finals.

The first leg at the José Alvalade was lost 2–1. In the dressing room there was a confrontation between Bielsa and his captain, Andoni Iraola, who reacted badly to his manager’s criticism of his performance. Iraola had been driving up and down Athletic’s right flank from his position at full-back all season. He was carrying an injury and he was taking injections to dull the pain. Spain would be defending their European Championship title in the summer and he must have had a chance of making Vicente del Bosque’s squad.

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