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There is irresistible evidence right now that signing coaching talent from Spain’s northern coast brings guaranteed success, and Arsenal, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Chelsea need no convincing.
In international terms, the European and world champions (Spain) are coached by a Basque (Luis De La Fuente), in club terms, double Champions League winners PSG dance to the tune of another north-coast Spaniard, Luis Enrique, and the reigning Europa League holders and English champions owe their success to a couple of guys, Unai Emery and Mikel Arteta, who grew up within a few miles of one another in San Sebastián (part of the Gipuzkoa territory in Spain’s Basque country).
It is, literally, a phenomenon. This is a coaching domination by a small community on a grand scale.
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Now the fascinating prospect is that four of England’s great clubs will all be jostling for trophies and bragging rights this season, in the Premier League and in Europe, under the control of coaches who all learned at one amateur Gipuzkoa football club on the Bay of Biscay coastline.
Arteta, Emery, Andoni Iraola and Xabi Alonso have already enjoyed jaw-dropping coaching success — historic triumphs with Arsenal, Bournemouth, Bayer Leverkusen, Sevilla and Aston Villa between them. Now, they will all be going toe-to-toe for England’s silverware.
What they also share, particularly Arteta, Iraola and Alonso, is an identical development path, often criss-crossing experiences in their home town of San Sebastián, being trained under the same ethos, often by the same coaches.
The amateur club in question is Antiguoko, which can claim partial responsibility for Bournemouth earning their first ever UEFA qualification (Iraola played for Antiguoko as a kid then, eventually, began his coaching career there), for Bayer Leverkusen winning their only Bundesliga title (Alonso) and for Arteta bringing Arsenal their first Premier League trophy in 22 years. Remarkable, right?
Those who run football at Antiguoko, and around the Gipuzkoa region, are beginning to smile with resignation as Europe’s media approach them and demand the magic formula which has produced these brilliant alumni (and a host of other key figures in coaching and directorial roles around the continent).
There’s no magic — just ideology, hard work, decades of development and attention to detail.
Iraola says: “The number of successful coaches formed in the Basque Country receives a lot of attention because, despite being a small place, we have a great football culture.”
When Arteta was last asked about what it is that makes Basque coaches so successful he gave a simple, short answer: “It’s about passion we have and the education that we all got.”
That education includes the fact that kids who follow the Arteta-Alonso-Iraola route in Gipuzkoa, aren’t allowed to belong to a single club, practising a single sport, until they’re 10 years or older.
The idea being that young boys and girls must continue to learn and develop through other sports like basketball, handball and volleyball before they, eventually, specialise.
The concept is to keep mixing with differently talented youngsters, to keep working on different spacial and athletic disciplines, to learn from and then cross-fertilise eclectic ideas.
Written down in black and white it makes simple sense, doesn’t it?
There is also a huge emphasis placed on the coaches who train kids earning good qualifications, having a shared ideology, and being given respect by the community around them.
Again, doesn’t that sound like basic common sense and decency?
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During research for this column, Manu Diaz, the president of the Guipúzcoa Football Federation, explained: “There’s a disproportionate number of coaches in our region because of our sense of community — people want to give something back.
“Kids want to become coaches, they wait for their 16th birthday to be able to start doing their badges as if they were waiting for the chance to learn to drive. You also learn from a young age how to be part of a big group and that lends itself to eventually being good at leading. The coach is very well respected.
“People can invent a narrative that there is a common school of football here but really more than a shared way of seeing the game, it’s a shared way of seeing life. There’s a Basque word that sums it up: ‘Auzolan‘ which refers to working together with neighbourly cooperation.”
Some of that is evidenced by the way in which Arteta, Alonso, Iraola and co. learned their earliest football skills, and learned “neighbourly cooperation” via the phenomenon particular to San Sebastián where huge numbers of junior football matches are played on the two main beaches.
When the tide is out, parents, kids and coaches literally draw out a series of pitches on the flat, hard La Concha and Ondarreta sand, drag out stored goal-frames and play dozens of matches until the Cantabrian sea sweeps in again.
The pitch-lines need to be scraped out by hand in the sand. Speed and teamwork is of the essence — not just when the matches start but in joining together to create the massive jigsaw of 10, 12, or 15 pitches as quickly as possible so that a host of games, with boys and girls of all ages, can take place. Teamwork makes the dream work.
Alonso, who won his first-ever trophy with Arteta in a tournament with Antiguoko when the pair were barely in their teens, explains: “I was lucky enough to have Mikel, who was also crazy about football, in our neighbourhood. Every day we’d go down to the beach on our skateboards to play tennis, surf, and, of course, play football.”
There’s no getting away from the fact that the Basque school of football development uses phrases and ideology which the modern, money-obsessed, fast-paced, hard-nosed elite world of football would find hokey and old-fashioned.
Mikel Arteta helped Arsenal to their first Premier League title in over two decades last season. Michael Regan/Getty Images For Premier LeaguePerhaps that’s the key: All the things that drive old-school fans crazy, that make them feel detached from the modern, foreign-owned, exorbitantly priced, corporate and investment-fund football are the opposite to the Antiguoko, Gipuzkoa, Basque ways which gave us Alonso, Arteta, Iraola and Emery.”It shines a spotlight on one of European football’s premier youth academies,” an Antiguoko spokesperson told ESPN. “We are a neighbourhood institution — modest in resources yet colossal in influence. We have served for decades as a true school for both footballing and human development.”These guys who now work in the Premier League have publicly acknowledged the profound impact Antiguoko K.E. had on their athletic and personal development. We nurture players, by fostering raw talent, but also via a culture of hard work, tactical intelligence, game interpretation, and collective commitment.”A footballing philosophy grounded in competitiveness and holistic development. Our club embodies the very essence of local grassroots football. Here, football is in the air from a very young age — but so, too, are discipline, a sense of closeness, and a deep feeling of belonging.”Five years ago Alonso was one of the co-authors of the Real Sociedad training manual, “Made In Gipuzkoa” published to help anyone across global football who cared to read it, learn from it and apply the concepts.
One of its key phrases, again sounding from another age, is: “The essence of this model is the person, not just the footballer.”
The training manual continued: “That boy or girl whose future we don’t yet know — footballer, engineer, doctor, mechanic, lawyer — is the centre of everything. In this model, each person is a project in themselves, and everything else revolves around them.
“Coaches at Real Sociedad accompany, nurture, and train the boys and girls throughout their entire journey, with stability as the foundation of a model based on trust and patience. In short, to nurture, to train, to guide, to educate. That is the mandate we receive from the community we want to represent, from the families of Gipuzkoa, from Gipuzkoa society in general.”
From that old-fashioned, humanistic, community-based football philosophy to the cutthroat, high-tech winner-takes-all ebb and thrust at the top of England’s Premier League.
Whatever divides Alonso, Emery, Arteta and Iraola this season, they are all unified by background, beliefs and some values that all of European football could learn from.
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