HELLO!

By: Paul | July 4th, 2009

Hello readers, my name is Paul and I am now the blogger for Athletic Club Bilbao here on theoffside. I have been a follower of Athletic for a little more than a year now and always enjoyed reading this site for some news and opinion in English, and when it went inactive I was disappointed. I saw the last post that the site was looking for a new blogger so, here I am!

Just to introduce myself: I live in Houston, Texas and am currently about to enter my senior year of college and plan on attending law school after that. Other than Athletic, my favorite teams are Tottenham Hotspur and Houston Dynamo. I hate Manchester United and Real Madrid. My favorite television program is House, favorite color is yellow, I suppose and….ah, who cares- enough about me!

Anyway, much has happened in the world of Athletic Club Bilbao since November 15, 2008. The team got on a few hot streaks, and ended up finishing much better than expected at that point in the season. Los Leones reached the final of the Copa del Rey, falling 3-0 to Barcelona. I will call a moral victory on that one; Barcelona was basically an unstoppable force and reaching the final showed much potential that, frankly, I didn’t think the team had in ‘em.

There is some recent news as far as players go as well:

Iñigo Diaz de Cerio scored 16 goals for Real Sociedad in the 2007-08 season. (Image from EITB)

The club offically presented former Real Sociedad striker, Iñigo Diaz de Cerio, as a member of the team. It’s nice to see the team go for a decent player not from the lower leagues for once and it appears that they value the player, giving him a four-year contract with a buyout clause worth 50 million Euros(!). Oh, and did I mention that he was free? If he can return to his pre-injury form, he should pair well with Llorente up front. Also, his signing makes it very unlikely that Ion Velez will be sticking around- but I don’t think I’ll miss him much.

As far as current players go, Fernando Llorente appears close to extending his contract until 2013. I heard rumors that other teams were interested in him (Barcelona and Bayern Munich) and, while I would love to see him have success at a larger club, Athletic need him on the team- it seems like he was “the man” for each win last season.Tiko and Lafuente have terminated their contracts and Athletic may be interested in Joseba Llorente. I will miss Tiko and Lafuente and wish them the best luck, but neither was really extremely valuable to the team. I would like to see J. Llorente on the team, and it would be nice to have the depth of the two Llorentes plus our new boy de Cerio as striking options.

This may have been a lot to handle for just one post, but much has happened since the last posting. I will try to stay active on this blog and will do my best to post at least once a week. Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope to keep writing for a long time!