Garitano’s Athletic did European numbers

Athletic, with the help of a leader like Gaizka Garitano, has raised in the second leg a season in which the followers and the team itself felt the fear of relegation. Derio’s technician knew how to lift a team that had gone without winning from the second matchday to the fourteenth, in which Eduardo Berizzo’s project was without a compass and had only accumulated eleven points. It should not be forgotten that Athletic also dragged a bad dynamic from the previous year: it ended in 16th position with 43 points. Now, despite the initial ballast, has risen eight places and added ten more points.

Garitano soon understood which was the formula to rescue Athletic from one of the most complicated episodes in its history. He turned the team very strong in San Mamés, where no one has won in league competition under his command, and that fragile defensive team became a wall. Iñaki Williams, the bet as striker, and Raúl García were accumulating goals to ascend positions until the unthinkable possibility of classificating for the UEFA was vanished by Iñigo Martínez’s shot to the crossbar in the Sánchez Pizjuán at the final minutes of the encounter.

If Berizzo scored just 11 points in 14 dates, his successor added no less than 26 in that same number of games. The team escaped rom the relegation positions and gradually began to look to Europe. Victories came with spectacle as against Sevilla FC in San Mamés, with two goals by Iñaki Williams. The Sevillian team at that time was fourteen points above the lions who, if they had won in Sánchez Pizjuán, would have finished ahead. But the show also arrived in the stands of San Mamés, with a renewed atmosphere, focused on the revival of the team thanks to the initiatives undertaken by the Club to achieve greater animation.

There were very emotional matches against the first two qualifiers of the championship: 0-0 against Barcelona (against which Athletic has not lost this year) and 2-0 against Atletico. The 3-1 against Celta, with two goals by Raúl García and another by Williams, left the door wide open to Europe. However, the lucky point was missing in Iñígo Martínez’s shot which, if it had come in, would have done justice to his great season. Garitano’s Athletic did deserve getting to the UEFA, the numbers say Athletic was the fifth in points, just behind the top four of the tournament. It is a guarantee for the project that is being built from now on for the next season.