Aspe has announced that it is not renewing Xabi Tolosa’s contract, which ends on December 31. After 12 seasons in the … promoter from Eibar, the 30-year-old Anoeta defender will not be able to say goodbye on the field, since the scaphoid fracture that occurred on August 1 at the Burunda de Altsasu after suffering a fall while playing in the CaixaBank Masters Series B, prevents him from even playing the rally without feeling pain.
«I have used all available means to try to play ball again. “I have been with physios, I have worked with my physical trainer and I have not been able to get my wrist ready,” the defender told DV. «From the first hit of the ball I feel pain. I can’t stand the impact of the ball and that prevents me from training and remaining fit in elite ball. “I have not recovered and I cannot follow a logical training regimen,” adds Tolosa.
And in the last two years the man from Anoeta has suffered a real ordeal in that right wrist in which he has undergone up to three operations. For the first, we have to go back to 2018, when on February 13, Carnival Tuesday, at Beotibar, he began to feel pain in his right wrist. «It was something sudden. I had not noticed any discomfort before. Nor was it due to a specific blow or poor hand support in a fall. It was surprising. “My right wrist started to hurt,” he then told DV. “They did an MRI in which tenosynovitis was observed.”
After conservative treatment it reappeared on April 1 in Lekeitio, but the pain reappeared. «I underwent a second MRI that detected the crack in the cartilage. “Perhaps the inflammation of the wrist itself prevented it from being seen in the first test,” he said.
The operation began to be a serious possibility even though it did not ensure that he would be able to continue playing ball. However, the doctors’ contrary opinion and the good results of the infiltrations postponed the intervention. In fact, he managed to play a couple of games without problems until on August 23, in Elgoibar, the pain reoccurred, which definitely led him to undergo surgery to resolve the rupture of the triangular fibrocartilage.
Six years after that, his right wrist gave him problems again. It was August 2024 when Tolosa, which had renewed for two years in January, began to feel pain that was not unknown to it. After being reviewed by a specialist, a conservative treatment with plasma infiltrations was chosen to try to be available at the San Mateo fair. He had to give up both the tournament and the Couples because the pain was still there.
On December 17, he underwent a first arthroscopy in Vitoria that did not resolve anything, which at the beginning of the year, and with some desperation, took him to Madrid to consult with Dr. Francisco Piñal, who found the solution after a second arthroscopy. “By then I was aware that my sporting career was over,” he explained on DV on May 8, one day before his reappearance in Villabona after six months away from the fields.
Tolosa played five games after his reappearance without feeling any discomfort. He competed in the San Fermín Series B Tournament and the CaixaBank Series B Masters in which he suffered the fateful fall on August 1 that caused him to fracture his scaphoid. The Anoeta defender was scheduled to play in the Aste Nagusia tournament in Bilbao and the La Blanca tournament in Vitoria, as well as a match in Ordizia partnering with Altuna III on the occasion of the Euskal Jaiak. He couldn’t play them.
Recovery against the clock
Tolosa began his recovery as soon as he could, knowing that his contract expired at the end of the year and that time was against him, but it has been impossible for him to return and Aspe announced his decision yesterday in a brief statement. «The Aspe company announces that it will not renew the contract of pelota player Xabier Tolosa after twelve years at the Eibar promoter. Aspe wants to thank the Anoeta defender for the career developed throughout all this time,” said the company with which he has played 482 matches and has won two Parejas Serie B txapelas in 2015 and 2016, in addition to being the starting defender in three editions of Parejas, twice with Ezkurdia and once with Altuna III with whom he played in a semi-final group.
