The history of football is full of disagreements between the star of his team and his coach, conflict plots that have always ended with one of the two contenders transferred or fired. One of the most famous in Spanish football was the one they starred in in the 80s Javier Clemente and Manu Sarabia in Athletic, two-time league champion. War that this Saturday, 37 years later, will experience an episode of reconciliation: Clemente is going to train Sarabia again.
This year Athletic celebrates the 125th anniversary of its foundation, an anniversary that is being commemorated with a multitude of events and initiatives. One of them is a match between legends of the red and white club and Porto, which will take place in San Mamés after the Athletic-Atlético de LaLiga, which will be played at 4:15 p.m.
The party call
Clement and José Ángel Iribar They have been appointed as coaches of the team of former red-and-white footballers, whose call-up was announced this Wednesday. In it there are very veterans like himself Sarabia, Txato Núñez and Luis Fernando even players who hung up their boots recently, such as Beñat, St. Joseph and Susaeta.
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This is the team of legends, with Clemente and Iribar at the helm, which will face the @FCPorto Vintage this Saturday in San Mamés after the #AthleticAtleti#Athletic125 ❤️ pic.twitter.com/rF0OpzFgXa
— Athletic Club (@AthleticClub) December 13, 2023
The Athletic fans will once again enjoy many players who once achieved success with the red and white shirt and will be able to witness the reconciliation (or at least the cohabitation) of Clemente and Sarabia, heroes, each one from their role as the last two leagues won by the Bilbao team, in 1983 and 1984.
That was a profitable relationship between coach and striker that exploded a couple of seasons after the last league title, when Clemente decided to bench who had been his starting striker.
Clemente’s version
“He played for three years at a very high level, with a lot of effort, and he started to go down. He was still just as good, eh? But I changed the concept of the team and, instead of bringing out Manolo from the beginning, I conceived a Manolo for the second parts. We were very well classified, third, but he couldn’t stand not being the headline. I had problems with a newspaper here, El Correo, with a certain Paco Crespo, who was a nocturnal ‘golferas’ and they coincided quite a bit in their getaways I fight with the journalist and Sarabia with him at night. When I put him on the bench, he started making statements claiming that he had to be the starter,” Clemente explained a couple of months ago in an interview on Jotdown.
Clemente was fired after (coincidentally or not) leaving Sarabia out of a call-up and Athletic never again reached the levels of excellence achieved during that time. that of La Gabarra, remembered with nostalgia in Bilbao. 37 years later, San Mamés will once again cheer on Sarabia and Clemente’s team.
2023-12-13 12:48:00
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