Athletic Club signs Ibai Gómez

Today, 4 June, Athletic Club and the player Ibai Gomez Perez have signed the agreement by which the player will be linked to the rojiblanca discipline until 30 June 2012. He was born on 11 November 1989 in Bilbao; he’s 1’79 meters tall and weighs 71’5 kilograms.

Ibai Gomez recalls the days prior to Athletic Club’s interest materialized: ‘the truth is that I had the impression that everyone knew before I did. Besides, I had enough with the situation Sestao was going through, to stop and think about it’.

He does recognize that ‘it has been a great jump; a year ago I was in the Honour Division and recently in Second B. It’s an opportunity and I have to know how to take advantage of it. That’s what my friends used to tell me, that someday I’d have the option and now that it’s here I should enjoy it first and do it well later. That’s why my family and friends are so happy’.

Everything indicates that he will be playing the preseason with the first team as of 9 July: ‘the fact of playing the preseason is a challenge that I must confront without inhibitions and that I want to tackle as soon as possible. Paradoxically it’s the prettiest, but it’s also the hardest’. For him to have a contract with Bilbao Athletic ‘it could by positive, if I don’t play up top I will play elsewhere, but what no soccer player wants is to not play at all’.

With regards to his virtues, he indicates that ‘I don’t like to define myself; I prefer that others do so. I like to play the left, although like any footballer, you have to conform to the coaches’ wishes’.

Finally, and in view of the players who to date are in, for example, Second Division B, Ibai would like to send them a message of hope: ‘I know that a priori it seems impossible, but you too could get that opportunity. I would just tell them to work hard day in and day out and if the opportunity arises it’s necessary to face it with a solid head on their shoulders and their feet well on the ground’.