A region in northern Spain’s Basque Country with the population of Wiltshire – Gipuzkoa – has become a football phenomenon by producing several of Europe’s current top managers, including Mikel Arteta, Xabi Alonso and Unia Emery. So what is their secret?
Mikel Arteta was only half-joking when he said it was the cuisine. “We have the best food in the world. The best restaurants by square metre, the most beautiful city,” he said in September. “It has to be linked to that.”
The Arsenal manager’s culinary theory comes with a pinch of salt, but there is no denying that coaches from his tiny corner of northern Spain have a winning recipe.
It’s not just Arteta, whose side are second in the Premier League. Unai Emery, mastermind of Aston Villa’s revival, and Andoni Iraola, who has made Bournemouth the form team in England’s top division, are also from the tiny province of Gipuzkoa.
So is Xabi Alonso, coach of German league leaders Bayer Leverkusen, former Wolves, Real Madrid and Spain boss Julen Lopetegui, and Imanol Alguacil, who has taken Real Sociedad, of the region’s capital San Sebastián, into the Champions League knockout stage.
For a population the size of Wiltshire’s, Gipuzkoa is nothing short of a phenomenon. So what is the secret?
Firstly, it has long been a football hotbed. Bilbao’s Athletic Club was founded in 1898 by students who fell in love with the game while at university in England and is one of only three Spanish clubs never to have been relegated from the top flight.
Both they and Real Sociedad won back-to-back league titles in the 1980s, and both continue to build their squads almost exclusively around the abundant local talent.
Secondly, Spanish football experts point to the hard-working ethos of the Basque Country, typified best by Emery. His almost obsessive attention to detail has repeatedly turned middling players into very good ones.
It has gleaned European trophies for Sevilla and modest Villarreal, and is currently transforming Villa from relegation battlers to top-four challengers.
Then there is the Antiguoko connection. Remarkably, Arteta, Iraola and Xabi Alonso were teammates at the strictly amateur San Sebastian-based youth team which is dedicated to developing young talent.
Antiguoko’s approach places the emphasis on possession football, a philosophy that not only served Arteta and Xabi Alonso well as players for some of Europe’s top teams but also runs through their Arsenal and Leverkusen sides.
Last but by no means least, the Antiguoko trio have also been influenced by working with some of the best – and most dogmatic – football managers of the 21st century.
Arteta passed through Barcelona’s La Masia academy, played for Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal and then assisted all-conquering Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.
Xabi Alonso was a key man in Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool, played under both Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid, and later learned from Guardiola at Bayern Munich.
Iraola was captain of Athletic under ultra-pressing evangelist Marcelo Bielsa, whose ideas he has drawn on at Bournemouth. To complete the circle, Guardiola is himself a devotee of Bielsa.
The food probably helps, of course. San Sebastian has become a mecca for gastronomes seeking pintxos – tasty morsels usually mounted on bread and served in bars with a drink – and txuleta – wonderfully tasty and often gigantic rib steak cut from aged dairy cows – as well as plentiful fresh seafood.
But the current crop of football managers means that the Basque Country is quickly gaining renown for another famous export.
