SOMETHING IN THE WATER

A small corner of northern Spain is having a huge impact on the world of football

- Sid Lowe

Maybe it’s the txuleton, Julen Lopetegui jokes. Txuleton, the giant T-bone steak, is central not just to the food but also the culture of the Basque Country, which is why it may not be such a huge leap to offer it up as an explanation for a footballing phenomenon: how a place so small can have an impact on the game so great, a generation of managers coming from a single corner of northern Spain. If once is chance, twice a coincidence and three times a pattern, this is something else again, something special, and it reaches right to the top.

Back in the late 1990s, Mikel Arteta played for a local youth club called Antiguoko, whose pitch lies close to the beach in the city of San Sebastian, home of Real Sociedad. He was not alone; among his team-mates there were a handful of other boys you will have heard of and men you will hear more from too. It’s not just that Xabi Alonso and Andoni Iraola also made it as players, as did team-mates Aritz Aduriz and Xabi’s brother Mikel, nor that they were internationals with over 1,400 professional games between them; it is that there was something stirred inside them and they too are now coaches.

Arteta’s Arsenal team lead the Premier League. Alonso is at Bayer Leverkusen. And Iraola is at Rayo Vallecano, in an historically high place in La Liga, competing for the European spots. In February Leeds United tried to bring him to the Premier League. And that’s just the start.