For a child, is the ball as round as the world?

My father was a footballer, my two guys were also my mother's uncle, Koldo Aguirre, a former Athletic player... I've been breathing football since I was young. Since there was no more than that, I have grown up with it, tight, strangled, to the point of feeling. Upon reaching the professional world, comparisons are inevitable and had too many references at home. In addition, in our time, in children, people stop studying. At 15, the only thing people had in their head was playing at Athletic. Although in the quarries of the big teams, the crib is passed every year and the most common thing is that it never reached the first team, people left it all in the name of football. Imagine that many of them have moved from the Reds to the Reds by not falling behind and are now beginning to learn. I was tempted to continue the studies, but then both the players and the parents were blind and the clubs did little to maintain the studies. Now, fortunately, they have teachers in Lezama and Zubieta, and as for a kid, he gets a crazy wind, the club says, “Txikito, keep learning!”

It is not easy to continue studying, while parents lose their heads in the stands, when the delegate whispers to the ear that is Messi for tomorrow.

The parent's is a huge accumulation of frustrations. Most mothers and fathers who scream halfway to madness want their child to become what they wanted and they didn't go. Let us not fool ourselves, many times parents want the child to be a football player, not children. How can we explain, if not, the blindness of the competition that exists in the intersectional parties? It is not normal, as it is not normal for representatives. So, even though it's amazing, a young Eibarrés has a representative. When I was training in third, a suit and tie came to agree that players should charge between 150 and 200 euros a month. Hallucination. I'm playing football from a young age, but I still have a hard time understanding all the paraphernalia of football.

You've competed in Primera, Segundo, Segundo B... Is there a lot of difference from fokupa in the shadow?

In the eyes of the general public, there is only what is sold. 2nd Category B is not particularly attractive, there are increasing economic problems, television has removed people from the camps... Today, in Primera, or at most in 2. If you're not in category A, you don't have an echo, you're a zero for people. They're bad times, TV moves the wires and out of the elite it's cold. If you want income you have to be in First or Second A. This means that in the Spanish state only 42 teams have a chance to survive. Below that, neither the players, nor the coaches, nor the club can live from football. Just as the system is organized, being out of the Professional Football League leaves you almost out of football.

So does it happen to people to listen to football before “money”, “fame” or “controversy”, “goal” and “ball”?

There are more and more programmes around football, but there is less and less talk about football. Coaches are also giving and giving press conferences, not just talking about football. According to the press, the referee, the statements of one and the other, the clothing brands, the controversies, the fichajes, the violence of recent times... It's all that's going on around, but it seems that nobody cares about the essence of the game. The environment is much more echoed than the hill. I understand that we are in a big circus and that this business could not be maintained without selling polemics, marketing, gossip and t-shirts. I like the game, but I'm a game patient. A football game is for me like a chess game. But it's useless, if many journalists got started on the game, they would be in the back view, the coaches would have to move a lot more, teaching us what we know and what we don't know, and in the name of the comfort of all, nobody talks about the game.

Let's talk about what it takes to be a good coach.

To be a good coach you need a great knowledge of the game, but above all, knowing how to manage the team, being a leader. All the leading coaches today are the leaders, the drivers, the ones who know how to convey and communicate their ideas, the ones who convince the player with their own convictions, the ones who express each other, the ones who control the keys of interpersonal relationships... For me, the coach is the manager, the coach. We know that we can't make mistakes in tactics, technique, training preparation or game thinking, but managing the overall balance of the team is what gives us the most headache. Being as I am, I try to be an example for players, preaching with what I do more than with what I say. I am not in favour of great speeches, I prefer to mark a path with my mistakes and ambitions and to be consistent with that path. My motto is coherence and work. I'm often wrong, but I'm always on the beaten track and doing the work. If a coach has not prepared the training well or planned the video to show players, in vain he will ask them for work and rigor, he has no credibility. However, if you mark your way with actions, people will follow you.

Is a homogeneous group built by an identity going to follow you more easily?

In football today it is increasingly difficult to maintain a number of basic values, to form a homogeneous team. It would be ideal for us to build an Euskaldun group, or at least a group of Basques. However, we are in Primera División, and the best Basque players go to Real and Athletic Club. This forces us to go to the Spanish market and abroad, which makes it increasingly difficult to create a group linked to the people, culture and character of Eibar. That's why we spend hours and hours explaining that here is a village, a culture, a language, a nature and a way of doing things. The Eibar is not an in-use team. Players should know what this team was 40 years ago, what it was 5 years ago and how they have to behave in a club like ours. Before signing, that's why we look so much at the player's personality outside the field. Those who are not hard-working or humble will hardly lengthen it in our environment.

It takes time to internalize the broadcast, time that doesn't exist in football.

It is true that you are valued on the basis of the final result, that there is no future in football, that you go from one day to the other from summit to the hole... but I am from a young age I am stuck on that wheel and I do not realize it. I have pressure, but I'm not sorry. I've been used to living in such an emergency. That is why I say that everyone places pressure on himself. It can drown you a bagatela and you will grow up in an evil state. So, looking at it in the cold, we don't have pressure. Children who starve to death, who are about to lose their homes, who stay in the street... They're the ones who have real pressure. What pressure do we have? If we are thrown away, it will be a pity, a wound to pride, but we will not starve to death. That is why we must not forget that ours is a circus and that every day we are equal to what is actually under pressure. Many times we are very concerned, at the limit of anguish, revealed, but we have it all.

They say that lack of time brings amnesia. Do we realize the feat of Eibar?

We have not realized it. We haven’t had time to lie down on the beach and proudly say our cigarettes “look what we’ve achieved!” 2nd We didn't have the largest budget and we climbed. 2nd In A, we won the league with the lowest budget. I love to demystify money, dodge money, demonstrate that there are other values, that you don't always win the money. I am as happy as raising the heap with the lowest budget. We don't have the field to train, but we're on the front line. That's not forgotten.

"And now, what? I'd ask discontent.

The moment you meet your goal is always critical, because when you define new goals you always have the risk of finding yourself with your limits. Despite what we have done in recent years, people want more. But now we're at Primera, starting the season better than expected, and the hard times are getting closer and closer. In football it happens like on the mountain, once you climb the top you keep eating the snack, but when the night comes and the cold there is no choice but to go down. We're enjoying the snack on the top. That is why we must strive to prolong that pleasure and be prepared for the arrival of the night and the cold.

When the night and the cold come, the coach is at risk of staying alone.

Players can throw out the coach and the press as well. It's no accident that many coaches live in the newsroom. A friend who knows a lot of football always tells me that if the coach sells well to journalists and knows how to make changes, he's saved. I have no strategy to manage it. I try not to turn a thousand heads and give the floor to naturalness and sincerity. For example, I feel a responsibility for my idea, for the people and for the language. My point is not just to be an employee of Eibar and win games, but to reclaim what I have inside me, to help take steps forward. What does that cost? I prefer to pay that price and sleep peacefully. Those of us who are constantly in the window must also do our bit of sand.

Should public institutions donate money or forgive debts to football teams to stay in the window?

I do not think it is normal for a club that is about to disappear to receive aid and not to excuse anyone who cannot afford to pay the house. But that's what's happening today, and on those occasions you're ashamed to be part of the circus. It is true that people do not want their group to disappear, but who should be given the aid? A club that is indebted for poor management? The authority that stole the money? So far, doing things right didn't seem to be worth it. We were fighting debt free against indebtedness, but when it came to signing the indebtedness they offered more money than we did. That's a trap. Fortunately, the waters recover, the fact that the whole system is exposed makes it clear that a football team has to be managed as a domestic economy, without spending more than you have, living according to your abilities. That benefits those who pay, and I think the coming years will be better for Eibar.

The latest cases of football violence have also highlighted the system.

It is true that clubs have to do their homework, but the solution is as simple as the problem. If people, as they go from children to the countryside, have seen their parents, surrounded by amateurs who are wanting to fight with their heads lost, screaming songs that are ethically dubious, what do we expect? Nothing like that happens in England. Changing that is an educational issue that is in our hands. If one generation tells the other since childhood that people have to be respected, the violence will disappear spontaneously and immediately from football. Football is the reflection of society, and if society is clear that there is no room for violence in football, ending current attitudes will be a matter of a few years.