Iker Muniain (Pamplona, 31 years old) debuted with Athletic a week before Óscar De Marcos (Laguardia, Álava, 34 years old), which is why he is the first captain. Curiously, they did it against the same rival, Swiss Young Boys, in the Europa League preview, one in the first leg and the other in the second leg – a match in which Iker scored his first red-and-white goal. They had joined the first team a few weeks after the team then coached by Joaquín Caparrós lost their first Cup final of the 21st century against Messi and Guardiola’s Barça. They were two kids.
Fourteen seasons later, and four lost finals later, they aspire to win their first major title, although along the way they have enjoyed two Super Cups. In your case, it may be the penultimate opportunity, if not the last, to achieve it. “I’m telling my head to enjoy this final more than the previous ones in case it’s the last one we reach,” confesses Óscar De Marcos, who postpones his decision to continue at Athletic or retire from the club until the end of the season. soccer. He does not consider any other option, and the club will respect what he decides. He is a starter for Ernesto Valverde, and will renew if he wishes, but aspiring to a title is not easy. “Winning would be something unique,” he says. “I carry it as best I can. “We are all excited and that in the end gives you butterflies in your stomach.” For Muniain, “a title is good for everyone.” “This will be my fifth final, but the important thing is that the club, in all these years, has been able to get kids who take a step forward and look to the older players to continue growing, and that is good news for Athletic,” comments the footballer. The Navarrese prefers not to talk about himself, but about the team. “I don’t want to focus on the personal, but for the group it would be a tremendous joy to win a final, all adjectives fall short,” he adds.
The two veterans, 14 years after their arrival at Athletic, remember everyone who played alongside them since they arrived. “We are the visible face, but these days I think about my former teammates, many of them, those who have tried and haven’t even gotten to play, those who looked for it with me and we didn’t get it,” De Marcos confesses. “We are here passing through and we are leaving our legacy. They left theirs in much more complex situations so that now we can enjoy a final. If they achieve it, they would be part of the success,” he points out. Iker Muniain also remembers those who passed by him. “We are a different club for that reason, because I think the family that is created here is stronger than in other places. We keep those who have passed before us in mind because they are one of ours.”
De Marcos does not deny the lost finals, despite the disappointment of having been so close to such a special title for the red and white club. “You don’t have to delete anything. They are experiences that you live and from which you have to learn,” he says. “Of course they are tough struggles, but they were complicated endings, lived in different times and ages.” However, he clarifies: “Now I see the team convinced, prepared and eager to face it.” The Alava footballer has played in three finals. He missed the 2015 game, because in the second leg of the semi-final against Espanyol he saw a yellow card, necessary to stop a counterattack, and could not line up. In the fourth, he aspires to finally get some joy, even if it is not about any revenge. “In football, no one owes anyone anything, but we are insisting, we like the Cup, we have been fighting for it for years. We have made reaching a final something that must happen, and it is not like that. We have to give credit to what this team does.”
For Muniain, who now occupies a different role, with less presence in the team, this is not a different final than the previous ones: “I feel like all the others I have experienced, with all the excitement as if it were the first. I have another role, but here you have to be prepared for everything and always with the team first. Personally, the excitement is maximum,” he says before this Saturday’s duel against Mallorca in La Cartuja, and ends with a message to the youngest members of the team: “If there is one thing I have learned all these years, it is to enjoy the journey. We have had disappointments, but the journey is also important, and living it is exciting. That’s what I try to tell the young people on the team.” Tonight, one last station towards the Cup.
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