Football is like any other cultural phenomenon. These days, with footage of almost every major game available online within minutes, the race to be the pioneer has never been so keen. People are desperate to discover the next big thing, or to be the bloke down the pub (or more likely on Twitter) to say "oh yeah, I saw them years ago playing in a pub league, I knew they had potential". An acquaintance of mine was a living example when the Arctic Monkeys first appeared in 2005, having claimed to have seen them several times, and denouncing them the minute they dared to become mainstream by going straight to number one.
A similar trend appears to be emerging with football teams, and the fad at the moment is Athletic Bilbao. Now they are more popularly associated with knocking Manchester United out of the Europa League, both games on terrestrial television, the name is everywhere. Twitter almost combusted during the United tie, exploding into a rainbow of how wonderful they were, if only everyone played like them and so on. People who need to be the cutting edge of opinion declared undying love, and the non-believers were cast as the enemy.
The Bilbao substitutes were keeping a close eye on proceedings
While the title of this blog is something of a tenuous link, it certainly inspires comparison. Without aiming to cross over into reviewing television, here is a quick rundown. The Wire was an HBO show in the early 2000s, and largely ignored on these shores despite featuring a large number of British actors. It suddenly exploded, and was championed by the Guardian as the best thing since sliced bread, sliced bread having being invented the previous season (credit Abe Simpson). If you'd never seen the Wire, you were some sort of philistine. Quotes along the lines of "I wish I'd never seen it, so I could watch it again for the first time" were widespread.
Instantly transferable to Bilbao? Sure they play pleasing football, a move away from the risk-free game we see so often, and with an impressive, if borderline illegal, policy of only playing Basque players. It is worth considering if perhaps the pundits in Spain are quite so enamoured with Swansea, or is it just that the Swans play football in such a European way that it isn't novel to them? Perhaps Leon Britton will be seen as the next Pirlo or Xavi...
Llorente always wanted to play with Bendtner for Sunderland
Maybe I'm being harsh, and I should be able to admire Bilbao in the same way I loved the Wire. Having read an article recently on the rivalry between Athletic and Barcelona in the 1980s, it was nice to see a piece which wasn't completely full of praise (lots of mentions of assassinations, dictatorships, and introducing Maradona to cocaine), and there is a worry that like many clubs in Europe, coming to such a wide focus will lead to their best players ending up in Real Madrid's reserves by next season. Maybe one day someone will tell me they hated the Wire, and I'll respect the opinion.
With an manager like Bielsa in charge, you're always likely to get entertainment (see his Chile side at the 2010 World Cup). But if he were to move on, could I propose Clay Davis as Bilbao coach? Even just for the post-match interviews… What's shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit in Spanish?
You think I'm gonna be a scapegoat for the whole damn machine?
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