Ernesto Valverde, Athletic Bilbao’s ‘artistic, intellectual’ manager

By
James BAOUCH
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In early January, Ernesto Valverde managed his 500th La Liga match, becoming just the seventh coach to reach the landmark.

At that point, he was 18 months into his third spell on the Athletic Bilbao bench, having also taken charge of Espanyol, Villarreal, Valencia and Barcelona in Spain’s top division.

There were so many players, fellow coaches, directors and moments to remember, but the 60-year-old instead used the occasion to honour a dear friend who was no longer around to celebrate it with him.

“This is an opportunity for me to remember the people who have been with me through all these years,” Valverde said after the 2-0 La Liga victory at Sevilla on January 4. “Especially a great friend of mine, Jonan Ordorika, who died just before this season started, but remains present. I want to dedicate it to him, not just the 500th, but all of them, as he has always been here.”

Ordorika and Valverde were close from the latter’s time as an Athletic player in the 1990s. A ‘socio’ member of the club for 48 years, Ordorika was also a hugely important and influential figure within the Basque Country’s music scene.

It was typical of Valverde to use his own significant achievement to point cameras in another direction, towards one of his friends, who comes from another world outside football.

“Ernesto is a curious guy,” Valverde’s ex-Athletic team-mate and the club’s former president Josu Urrutia tells The Athletic. “He is very respectful and friendly, but he is discrete, very discrete. His profession is football, obviously, but he knows other worlds exist, with his friends in the film world, in music, art.”


Athletic fans, as captured by Valverde (Ernesto Valverde)

Born in Extremadura but raised in the Basque city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Valverde has always combined a passion and skill for football with wider cultural interests. Other close friends include folk-rock singer Ruper Ordorika (Jonan’s brother), screenwriter David Trueba and renowned writer Bernardo Atxaga.

“A good fortune of my life has been to make friends in football,” Atxaga says. “Ernesto Valverde is a very close friend. He is a different type of guy, such an artistic person, very serious, and intellectual. Far more than it might seem.”

Former Athletic left-back Mikel Balenziaga played under Valverde first from 2013 to 2017, winning the 2015 Supercopa de Espana with a famous 5-1 aggregate victory over Barcelona, and was a squad member again last season.

“Ernesto is a normal person, a good guy, and from there he wins you over,” he says. “He’s the best coach I’ve had for communicating the ideas he wants for the team, without talking much or shouting or banging his fist. He knows how to deal with every player, those playing more or fewer minutes. And you really appreciate it, for the personal connection with the player and the person.”


Valverde comforting Ibai Gomez after Athletic’s 2015 Copa del Rey final defeat by Barca (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

Balenziaga had one particular non-football connection and shared interest with Valverde. The defender is a member of Orsay, a band also involving other Athletic players — Asier Villalibre (vocals, trumpet), Oscar de Marcos, Mikel Vesga (both guitar), Inigo Lekue (bass) and Dani Garcia (drums). In 2021, Orsay recorded a song called One Club Men, as well as covers of well-known Basque rock songs, while helping with Athletic’s charitable foundation.

“It was really nice,” says Balenziaga, who is now with third-tier Deportivo de La Coruna. “We practised once a week, it was a hobby and a way to disconnect from football. That really helped us. Valverde loves to play the guitar too, so we would always be talking about the group, what songs we would play. He has a huge interest in music.”

Balenziaga, 36, grew up as a fan of the legendary Basque rock group Hertzainak. Valverde went to his first Hertzainak concert as a teenager in the early 1980s, then got to know its members when playing for Athletic a decade later. Singer Gari would wear a ‘rojiblancos’ jersey gifted by his friend when performing. The story goes that Valverde sometimes joined them on stage in smaller gigs, playing guitar or drums.

Valverde’s skill as a guitarist should not be underestimated. He has played on various songs and albums recorded over the years, produced by his friend Jonan Ordorika, and featuring other top musicians. This has included guesting on Basque language covers of Lou Reed songs Rock and Roll and Sword of Damocles in 2014 — they were homages to Reed, who spent time in the Basque Country in the early 2000s as a guest of Ordorika.

Most Athletic fans would be aware of these links, but not because Valverde often goes around talking about them. Supporters of other clubs where he has played or managed — including Barcelona, where he won two La Liga titles — might have no idea.


Valverde at his unveiling as Barca manager in May 2017 (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

That’s because Valverde does not really enjoy talking about his interests outside of football, and definitely does not boast about his celebrity artist friends.

“I remember saying to him, ‘Come on Ernesto, I saw you said your favourite film was Police Academy’,” recalls Atxaga. “And he told me: ‘If I say Dersu Uzala (a 1975 Soviet-Japanese biographical adventure drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa) and the following weekend I miss an open goal, everyone will laugh at me’. There are some very bad-natured journalists.”

Valverde has, at times, spoken more about his love for photography. He began studying at the Institut d’Estudis Fotografics de Catalunya in 1986 when playing at Espanyol, and even briefly considered the idea of becoming a professional photographer. He has kept his camera with him throughout a career that also included spells playing for Barcelona and Mallorca, then through his coaching life.

“I’ve always liked photography, it’s another part of what I do,” Valverde told Basque TV in August 2021. “Football raises such passions that you can be very high, very low, or in the middle, all in the same week. Photography is something calmer.”

This passion for photography expanded when he was Olympiacos coach in the 2008-09 season and then again from 2010 to 2012, spending more time away from his family in a new and interesting environment (while also winning five trophies, including three Greek league titles).

In 2012, he published his first book of photos, ‘Medio Tiempo’ (Half-time). Some were shot around football stadiums, others were more impressionistic takes of people and life in a society badly hurt by economic crises. A show of black and white images was held at Athens’ Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre, with the proceeds donated to local causes.


Pulpo en el Pireo (Octopus in Piraeus) (Ernesto Valverde)

Between leaving Barcelona in January 2020 and taking over Athletic for a third time in the summer of 2022, Valverde had more time to pursue other interests outside football. His second book of photos ‘Frontera’ (Border) was published in 2021. These shots had even less to do with football — including many striking liminal scenes and abstract images.

In the autumn of 2021, 24 large black and white photographs from across Valverde’s work were shown in an exhibition titled The Other Side, organised jointly by the foundations of Athletic and Real Sociedad, displayed at Bilbao’s Ensanche building and San Sebastian’s Ernest Lluch Kultur Etxea.

These showed scenes of Athletic fans celebrating the 2015 Supercopa victory, Olympiacos supporters greeting the team outside their Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium and a scramble for autographs when Barcelona visited Japan for a pre-season tour.

“It’s a series of photos taken from an unusual perspective,” Valverde told Athletic Club Foundation’s project manager Galder Reguera. “In this case, the people behind the camera are a football team. The photos generate some tension, like the people throwing themselves looking for autographs in Japan.

“Some of the celebrations in Greece seem, not violent, but uncomfortable. We wanted to provoke a feeling of unease. But in the end, you see a reflection of yourself. We are a football team, and people take photos of us, but we could be outside as fans ourselves.”


Valverde’s 2021 exhibition in Bilbao (Athletic Club)

Valverde’s camera collection includes a Hasselblad bought during his time at Espanyol, and two old-style analogue Contax models. He has cited Spaniards Alberto Garcia-Alix and Vari Carames, Swede Anders Pettersen and the Japanese master Daido Moriyama as influences. When in Japan with Barca in July 2019, Valverde visited the Moriyama Foundation in Tokyo. Moriyama happened to be there, and they have kept in touch since.

“Football gives you these things: to be able to meet a guru of modern photography,” Valverde told Reguera. “When I made the Frontera book, I sent it to him. And he sent me a photo of himself with the book in Tokyo. That was the best thing ever.”

Valverde was involved in establishing the Centro de Fotografia Contemporanea in Bilbao, whose director Ricky Davila is another friend. The institution holds courses, workshops and exhibitions. It is located just around the corner from Athletic’s offices in the Palacio de Ibaigane, and a short stroll from the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum designed by Frank Gehry.

“When he did the photography exhibition in Bilbao, I went to see it with (team-mate) Oscar de Marcos,” Balenziaga says.

“We had a chat with Ernesto, it was a bit different as he was not our coach at that point. It’s very curious that a football coach, who has been in charge of Barcelona, puts on an exhibition like this in Bilbao, for all the people. It shows how he is such a human person, so natural, with these hobbies. It speaks of the great guy that he is.”

Olympiacos fans see Valverde as a hero, and he is widely acknowledged as Athletic’s best coach of the 21st century, even before he guided them past Barcelona and Atletico Madrid to Saturday’s Copa del Rey final, where the Basques are big favourites against Real Mallorca and their North American owners.

But he is not as well known as he should be in the wider football world, perhaps due to his ability to find personal satisfaction in other areas, and tendency to avoid controversies or talking himself up.

Four trophies in two and a half seasons at Barcelona, despite all the chaos then behind the scenes at the Camp Nou, looks more impressive with time. He spoke to Manchester United in the autumn of 2021, but the decision-makers at Old Trafford appointed Ralf Rangnick instead, to the bafflement of many familiar with Valverde’s ability and record.

Still, there is a feeling that Bilbao is where Valverde fits best.


Valverde lifts the Supercopa de Espana trophy with Athletic in 2017 (Quique Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)

“Athletic is the club where I have been happiest, in all senses,” he told Basque TV in 2021. “You identify with everyone, and know what it means for everyone around you.”

Athletic Club is unique in modern football, and not just for its ethos of only using Basque-born or -developed players. The connection between the team and its community is uncommon, especially in how committed the club is to local arts and culture. Not many football clubs have a five-piece rock band in their dressing room.

Athletic’s foundation employs more than 50 people, and organises two annual festivals that invite leading figures in local and international literature and cinema to debate and connect: Letrak eta Futbol (Letters and Football) and the Thinking Football film festival.

“Athletic is a way of life,” says Urrutia, Athletic president from 2011 to 2018. “And we get behind our people. The priority is competing on the pitch, but we are also interested in other views, other areas of culture, where we can enrich ourselves.”

Valverde might not admit it — at least, not when focused on winning a first major trophy for Athletic since 1984 — but his interests and personality are reflected in the way the team are playing.

The association between players and fans has been particularly clear in recent months, with a young, homegrown team packed with committed, enthusiastic and skilful footballers playing a fast-paced, front-foot and aggressive style.

The atmosphere was electric during the 2-1 Basque derby win over Real Sociedad in January, and San Mames rocked again during the crashing 4-2 and 3-0 wins over Barca and Atletico in the Copa quarter-finals and semi-final home second leg.

There is maybe more connection with the ‘rock and roll’ of Valverde’s musical preferences than the quiet contemplation of his photography — but just like in his outside pursuits, his understated, thoughtful and intelligent approach has brought spectacular results.

“This is what makes Athletic great, the feeling that connects the player and the coach with the society and culture of the Basque Country and Vizcaya,” Balenziaga says.

“With Ernesto, you always feel he is the perfect coach for Athletic Club.”

(Top photo: Octavio Passos/Getty Images)



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