How A Small Province in Spain is producing World Class Managers
In the Serie A Premier League and Bundesliga, there are currently only 5 Spanish managers. Who is Iraola, Arteta, Emery, Alonso, and Guardiola. However, only one is from somewhere other than the Basque Region, Guardiola. In La Liga, there are presently 14 Spanish managers, three of whom come from Basque country: Gaizka Garitano, Imanol Alguacil, and Jagoba Arrasate.
Many of these managers are doing well in their league, for example, with Emery pushing Villa up to third in the league at the time of writing. So, what makes these groups of managers so successful and what makes the Basque country so special in creating these world-class managers?
On a late summer evening in San Sebastian or Donostia, as Basque locals know it, the capital of Guipuzcoa province in northern Spain, a handful of kids were playing football on the La Concha beach. This is where Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta played his first organised games of football, wearing the light blue of Antiguoko, his home city’s most successful youth club. Mikel and his friends played on the sand, with teams drawn from the different neighbourhoods of the city.
Antiguoko’s club headquarters is a literal stone’s throw away. It is an unassuming, modest but well-equipped space, decorated with the jerseys of dozens of former players who made it, including Arteta’s Arsenal No. 8 shirt and Iraola’s old Athletic Bilbao No. 15. Arteta was a member of what is now the most famous youth side in Basque football history. The Antiguoko under-14 team that also featured Xabi Alonso.
Mikel Etxarri, coaching chief at the regional Guipuzcoa football federation, said that sport has always been key to life in the province of Basque, which is home to almost 750,000 people, not even two per cent of the Spanish population.
This region is so successful in producing world-class managers because it is a hotbed for football. Both Athletic Club and Real Sociedad are from this region as well. Bilbao’s Athletic Club was founded in 1898 by students who fell in love with the game while at university in England. It is one of only three Spanish clubs never to have been relegated from the topflight. 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. All the talent in the region can play for these clubs in the top flight and now can follow in the steps of the great managers. Having managers from the region and clubs doing so really promotes the area and the talent from this area. This, therefore, will lead to more investment in the local area and continue to develop talent from this area, which we can see spread across the footballing world.
The second reason is for the hard-working ethos of the Basque Country, typified best by Emery. His almost obsessive attention to detail has repeatedly turned middling players into good ones. It has gleaned European trophies for Sevilla and modest Villarreal and is transforming Villa from relegation battlers to top-four challengers. This hard-working ethos can be seen all the time with the managers from the Basque country. This makes the team work much better and lifts the team to fight for titles and win leagues. Having this ethos can only lead to good results, making the Basque group stand out.
Thirdly with all Arteta, Iraola and Xabi Alonso being teammates at the strictly amateur San Sebastian-based youth team which is dedicated to developing young talent and Antiguoko’s approach emphasizes possession football, a philosophy that not only served Arteta and Xabi Alonso also as players for some of Europe’s top teams but also runs through their Arsenal and Leverkusen sides. You can see both coaches want to develop young talent from both talent pools of each club. One of the best examples of this is Saka. They made a regular under Arteta and have developed into one of the best wingers in the premier league in the last few seasons. They are now regulars for England as well.
Finally the Antiguoko trio have also been influenced by working with some of the best 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 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. All these three route have been lucky to been coach buy the world best managers but this also shows to clubs that with the right coaching of the staff they can get some real gems out of the basque coutnry they need to invest some time in the coachs and staff which is a luxary in football now a days.
