Lions Tamed By Young Boys (An Uphill Battle Ahead)

By: Paul | July 30th, 2009

So the first leg of 3rd round of Europa League qualifying is in the books…and Athletic have fallen 1-0 to BSC Young Boys. This is a surprise- Athletic were considered favorites, plus they tend to do well at home. Here are my impressions from the game:

The bad: The team looked pretty rusty in comparison with Young Boys. Los Leones haven’t looked too great so far this preseason, while the season has already begun for BSC. Young Boys did a fantastic job at marking and closing down Athletic’s players- each time one of the Basques made a move on goal he would find himself without much room to shoot.Young Boys seemed to give away a lot of fouls, however, Athletic were never able to make any of them count. It looks like the team will need more practice on set pieces- our penalty, our freekicks (except one), and our corners all turned out to be useless.

The good: Today, Munian made his first-team debut for Athletic and is officially the youngest player to appear in a competitive match for the team. He is one of the players who was able to make some moves on goal but was shut down. He looked pretty good today and seemed to be enjoying himself- Congrats to him!.
Xabier Castillo made his competitive debut for the team as well and he looked great. He made some important defensive plays (see picture at bottom of article) and created some promising attacks down the left wing. I was also glad to see that Javi Martinez was quickly able to see off injury and play today.

The ugly: Llorente missed a penalty. Well, ok, it was saved- he didn’t miss it. Still, it was something I thought he could have done much better. The penalty could have equalized the game and he takes a weak shot to the bottom-right corner of the goal and the keeper was easily able to get a jump on it. Then, in about the 84th minute Athletic were on the attack. Amorebieta and the BSC keeper jumped for the ball near the line behind the goal and the keeper came down with his arms around Amorebieta. This is debatable, but it looked like a penalty to me- about halfway down the keeper started laughing and came up with a smile on his face, shrugging his shoulders. Amorebieta hammed it up for a little while and the referee gave a goal kick to Young Boys (the ball went out of bounds). If you saw the play in question, I would like to hear your thoughts. One more “ugly” thing about the game was Llorente. In addition to messing up the penalty shot, Llorente made some stupid plays, keeping the ball when he could have passed it and created better opportunities.

So that’s the game- the next friendly is against Arenas on August first, and then Athletic will travel to Bern for the second leg of the Europa Cup qualifier against Young Boys. Hopefully we can get a couple back at Wankdorf (this is ACTUALLY the name of the ground for BSC Young Boys. That’s right- their team is called Young Boys and they play at Wankdorf).

Athletic’s lineup for the game:

————-Iraizoz————-
Iraola—Ocio—Amorebieta—Castillo
Susaeta—Orbaiz—Martinez—Yeste
——-Toquero—–Llorente——-

Subs- David López (46′ for Yeste), Munian (59′ for Toquero), Etxeberria (71′ for Susaeta), Armando, Koikili, Gurpegi, De Marcos