This time Gaizka
Garitano, coach of the Athletic, will not dedicate a goal to Mikel
Labaka, second of Imanol
Sheriff in the Real. In the derby on Thursday in San Mamés, in addition to the physical meters that separate the benches from the teams, both coaches will distance for a couple of hours the close personal ties that they began to cultivate in the three seasons they shared a dressing room in Anoeta and that in the last 15 years they have become close friends.
Gaizka
Garitano
Agirre (Derio, 1975) was a disciplined defensive midfielder who, trained in Lezama, did not have the confidence of the rojiblanco club to make the leap to the first team at the end of the nineties. In fact, it was not until the final stretch of his career that he was able to make his debut in the top flight at the hands of Real, who signed him in the summer of 2005 from Eibar, where in four seasons in the Second Division he brushed his promotion as a footballer and forged a reputed career path. He was 30 when he arrived in Zubieta.
Garitano found in the Real a litter of homegrown players to which he was united much more than a way of watching football. They were more than companions. That time in his life was decisive for the current Athletic coach. Not only because he formed a lifelong friendship with the Aranburu, Labaka, Ansotegi and company, with whom he shared many of the values that mark his way of seeing life and thinking about issues such as Basque or even politics, but because he established his residence in Zarautz, where he still has his headquarters and where he lives with his wife and two daughters.
They were not simple years at La Real since after the first two seasons of Garitano like txuri urdin, in 2007 the team was relegated to second. After spending one more season as a Blue and White and failing to return to the top flight to the top category, in the disastrous match and Mendizorroza, jaded by the situation the club was in, chaired by Badiola and on the way to bankruptcy law, the Biscayan signed for Alavés at the age of 32 in the summer of 2008 to hang up his boots a year later.
It is possible that that campaign in the Second Division, in difficult conditions, made the friendship of Garitano with a Mikel
Labaka to whom in March 2008, when they still believed that promotion was possible, he dedicated the goal he did to Xerez in Anoeta (4-2), one of the four goals that the Drift marked that campaign in Second. Later, with both retired as footballers, it was common to see them attending Real matches together live in Anoeta. It is unquestionable that Athletic is the cradle club for Garitano but it is no less so than La Real not only meant a lot to the deriotarra in his professional and personal career, but it also carries it in his heart. To the point that he surely celebrated a good handful of goals from the txuri urdin in the stands of Anoeta with a Mikel
Labaka To whom, yes, this Thursday he will not dedicate a goal in Saint
Mamas.