Athletic is Ernesto Valverde on the pitch of La Cartuja embodying the triumph of a way of doing things, his own, which is also that of the club he loves. The Athletic Club is the fruit of many seeds, thousands, millions, planted over 125 years by so many men and women.
We remember them these days of celebration in Bilbao, from whom we not only inherit a feeling, as the cliché goes, but something that is much more important: a way to relate to that feeling. In my case it is my grandfather and the moment that determines the way I see those colors is one shared with him. But it wasn't seeing the child's barge pass on his shoulders, nor the experience of a final, nor a goal in the last minute, nor an historic comeback. What determines the how I understand Athletic club is a reprimand. It happened in a random game in San Mamés. I would have been nine, ten, eleven years old. Not much happened and that was the biggest event for me, accompanying him to football on Sunday. I kept every moment for myself.