Muniain, the great little Athletic captain

“Responsibility, commitment, being a good teammate, respecting your opponent and knowing how to win and lose.” Yesterday, Iker Muniain explained to his colleagues at Athletic what it means to defend the emblem of the centenary Bilbao club. The Navarrese footballer surprised everyone and everything by publicly announcing that this would be his last year as a lion.

About two decades as a rojiblancó was left behind. He arrived at the age of 12 from Txantrea to join Athletic’s B team and less than five years later he made his debut as a lion under Caparrós. Navarrese, now 31 years old, then did not have a driver’s license to approach Lezama. Fernando Amorebieta and Fran Yeste played cicerones.

Muniain has shown both ease and courage on and off the field. At the grass level he dared to do anything. Also in the press room. Against Werder Bremen, in one of his first international appearances, he had no hesitation in facing Mertesacker, a 198-centimeter-tall center-back who a few years later played for Arsenal.

His emergence as a lion, surprisingly, came from the hand of Caparrós, the coach who managed Athletic after the so-called ‘black biennium’ and who during his time at Sevilla also selected Sergio Ramos, Reyes, Navas and some others. youth players. The Utrera coach managed to qualify the Bilbao team to compete in the Cup final a quarter of a century later. On May 13, 2009, the beardless Muniain was another fan at Athletic Hiria in Valencia. “I also have to play one last day,” he said afterwards with Isma López, another boy who became a lion. On July 30 of the same year, aged just 16, he made his debut as a first-team player. A week later, in Switzerland against the Young Boys themselves, he scored his first goal. Goal qualified Athletic to progress to Europe.

Then Caparrós, Bielsa, Valverde, Ziganda, Berizzo, Gaizka Garitano, Marcelino and again Txingurri passed through the Bilbao bench. In all of them, despite two serious knee injuries, he was unmistakable, sometimes as a midfielder and almost always on the left wing. However, Valverde’s third cycle on the San Mamés bench marked the beginning of the end of his journey as a lion.

Low participation

Navarrese has played in 17 league games this season, only three of them as a starter. His participation time in the regularity tournament reaches 435 minutes. In the Cup he had a total of 347 minutes distributed in five games, four of them in the starting eleven.

Last season he participated in 30 League games, 19 as a starter, completed 1,688 minutes and in 6 Cup games, four starts, totaling 370 minutes. A year ago, with Marcelino on the Athletic bench, however, he became the field player with the most minutes played in the league, 2,799.

One episode clearly reflects Munian’s current role on the team in terms of participating in matches. On the occasion of Villarreal’s visit to San Mamés with the Cup title already in his pocket, Valverde ordered him to approach his position to replace a teammate, certainly Sancet. The latter, however, then signed off with the score at 1-0 and the red-and-white coach, with a gesture towards the captain as if to say ‘understand me’, dropped the substitution and sent him back to the bench. The captain accepted the order with professionalism, but…

Muniain is a pioneer when it comes to renewing Athletic without a termination clause. On November 21, 2018, with Urrutia as acting president, he extended his membership as a lion until June 30 of the current year. The captain then posed with a shirt on which a text could be read in English which, translated, read: “Playing for the best clubs is a great challenge, but there is an even harder challenge: the playing against them and beating them. I dedicate myself to this work.”

Words spoken in his time by Matt Le Tissier, Athletic’s first ‘One Club Man’ for his Southampton career. Muniain, the second lion in the centenary history of the Bilbao club with the most games, will no longer be a ‘one club man’.