Little by little, more details of Athletic's preseason are being known. After starting work this week with the negative surprise of the six positive cases for Covid-19 (Williams, Sancet, Unai lopez, Nunez, Cordova and Larra), Athletic has released today the friendly fourth of preparation following the usual guidelines in this atypical summer, matches against close rivals and short trips if you have to travel to avoid any type of risk in these times in which the outbreaks of the pandemic are putting at risk everything advanced throughout the confinement.
The preparation meeting will be against Eibar at the Lezama facilities on September 5 (Saturday) from 11.30 am. Previously, the rojiblancos will have played three other games: against UD Logroñés, recently promoted to the Second Division, in Las Gaunas on August 29, against Alavés on Wednesday, September 2 in Lezama and against Real Oviedo on day 4 in Carlos Tartiere (19 hours), to face Jose Angel Ziganda, the coach of the Bilbao first team in the 2017-18 season.
Last season, the rojiblancos already played a friendly against Eibar on November 15, with a 4-1 result in favor of those led by Gaizka Garitano.
The set of Jose Luis Mendilibar, who has renewed for one season with the gunsmiths, finished last season in fourteenth position with 42 points, 6 from the relegation places that Leganes scored, but the Gipuzkoans suffered a lot throughout a course in which they noticed much the absence of important players who had offered a great performance in the previous season.
Eibar have also returned to training individually this week after registering a positive in the squad, which was detected on Monday. Discarded the stage in Austria of the last summers, those of Mendilibar they will train entirely in Gipuzkoa and will face rivals in the area. Thus, yesterday it was announced that Mirandés, Rayo Vallecano and Leganés will be the first rivals of the Barça preparation.
The Burgos team will visit Atxabalpe next Friday, August 21 starting at 6.30 p.m., while Rayo and Leganés will wait for the gunsmiths in Madrid. There will be two consecutive games to be held on Friday 28 and Saturday 29, first against the Vallecanos in their sports city (10.00 am) and 24 hours later Eibar will pay a visit to the facilities of the cucumber team, recently relegated to Second.