Athletic will take some stopping for Man Utd

For Manchester United, winning the Europa League is not just about lifting another trophy. It is about survival. After their worst season since being relegated in 1974, hoisting Europe’s second-biggest prize in Bilbao on May 21 would take the club back to where they both want to be and – financially – need to be: the Champions League.

For the last 30 years, United have been run as if they were always in or at least aiming to be in Europe’s top competition, meaning the wage bill hasn’t been altered even when they missed out on qualification. Failing to win the Europa League, though, would mean missing out on the Champions League for two consecutive seasons, something that has never happened since the club first entered the competition in 1993.

But more than pride is at stake for United. Being in Europe’s top competition is worth around £100 million ($134m) and could ward off fears about financial meltdown and meeting the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability obligations. It would also make United more attractive to players in the summer transfer window, which is crucial to shaping next season. As manager Ruben Amorim put it last month: “Being in the Champions League can change everything.”

Things are very different for Athletic Club, the team who stand in United’s way of reaching the final. Athletic are having their best La Liga season in 11 years and already on course to return to the Champions League after more than a decade away. That will be their only third campaign in Europe’s top competition, and they will savour it. And so with fourth-place domestically all-but secured, the Europa League is fundamentally about glory to the Basques who have the chance to win a European trophy for the first time in the club’s history.

But this season’s compettion is even more important than the UEFA Cup final in 1977 or the Europa League final in 2012, both of which they lost. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lift the trophy on home soil – and they are not going to give it up without a real fight.

‘Unique in the world’

“When you see how the crowd was today, when you see how happy you made them,” Athletic coach Ernesto Valverde began after beating Rangers in the quarter-finals to set up the tie with United, “the greatest thing about football is making people happy.” And Valverde has made fans in Bilbao very happy indeed after he delivered the club’s first major trophy in 40 years when they won the Copa del Rey in 2024.

‘This means more’ might be Liverpool’s marketing slogan. but if any club deserved to make such a proclamation then it is Athletic. The club’s policy of only selecting players with ties to the Basque Country is well-known and celebrated by the club with their own slogan: ‘Unique in the world’. And although the policy might have limited their potential success, it has also created an unbreakable bond with their supporters. So when they win a trophy, boy do they make it count.

Athletic had the mother of all parties after winning the Copa del Rey, staging a trophy parade like no other. Their celebrations did not take place on an open-top bus driving through the city centre, but instead on a boat, the legendary ‘Gabarra’ which had been sitting dormant in the city’s maritime museum for four decades, waiting for the team to win another trophy and be released down the Nervion river.

An estimated one million fans turned out to see it, and the players were just as drunk as the supporters. “We were drinking beer like animals,” striker Inaki Williams said. “Legend had told us what that Gabarra experience was like, but to live it was ultra special. It was a hard week; we played Villarreal that next night and we nearly beat them while still drunk!”

Valverde’s golden ages

Even with their unique selection policy, Athletic are still the third-most successful team in Spanish football behind Real Madrid and Barcelona in terms of trophies, boasting 24 Copas (only Barca have more) and eight La Liga titles. They were the best team in Spain through the early 1930s, winning four titles in seven years before the Spanish Civil War. They then had a renaissance in the 1950s, winning a double in 1956 before playing in the second edition of the European Cup the following season, where they came up against Sir Matt Busby’s United in the quarter-finals. They beat the Busby Babes 5-3 at home, but ultimately lost 6-5 on aggregate.

Another era of success came in the 1980s, when they won back to back La Liga titles, including a double in 1984 when they beat Diego Maradona’s Barcelona in a legendarily violent Copa del Rey final which makes last week’s events at Cartuja look like child’s play. The commercialisation of football in the 1990s did deal a serious blow to Athletic’s prestige and their model of only selecting players from their region, but under Valverde they have experienced two new golden ages.

The first was in his second spell as coach, when he led them into the Champions League for the first time in 18 years, to a Copa del Rey final and to a Spanish Super Cup triumph, smashing Barcelona 5-1 on aggregate. They qualified for Europe in each of his four years in charge, and after he left to take over at Barcelona, Athletic experienced a barren spell with no continental football.

That was until he returned in 2022, having taken two-and-a-half years out of football following his tumultuous time with Barca, where he won successive La Liga titles but was ultimately judged a failure after successive Champions League bottle jobs, as the Catalans threw away three-goal leads from first legs against Roma and Liverpool.

But back in Bilbao, Valverde has reminded everyone how good a coach he always was.

Spain’s best defence & an electric attack

Athletic knocked Barcelona and Atletico Madrid out on their way to beating Real Mallorca in last season’s Copa del Rey final, and finished fifth in La Liga as they narrowly missed out on a place in the Champions League. There has been no hangover from their wild celebrations this season, though.

The Basques went 16 matches and almost five months without losing in La Liga and were seen as genuine title contenders until they were beaten by Atletico in March. During that run. they beat Real Madrid for the first time in 18 league matches and nine years, and now possess a six-point cushion over sixth-placed Real Betis with five games left in the race to qualify for the Champions League. That standing has been built on the best defence in La Liga, which has conceded just 26 goals overall, and only 10 in home matches. That is bad news for United, who have scored only 39 Premier League goals, the joint-fifth lowest in the division.

The one shard of good news for United is Athletic’s top scorer, Oihan Sancet, is out of the first leg and is touch-and-go for the second thanks to a hamstring injury. But the Basques still have plenty of firepower that United will need to try and keep a lid on in both games. Inaki Williams has 20 goal contributions in all competitions and struck the only goal in the narrow win over Las Palmas at the weekend, while earlier in the Europa League campaign he struck twice away against Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce.

United will also have to keep an eye on Alex Berenguer and Gorka Guruzeta, but above all they will be watching out for Inaki’s younger brother, Nico Williams, who was the scourge of England in the Euro 2024 final. Williams Jr has not quite been in the same sparkling form as last season, with 10 goal contributions in La Liga compared to 16 in 2024-25, but he has been dealing with the emotional weight of constant speculation regarding a big-money move away from San Mames as Barcelona and Arsenal continue to be linked with him after a move to Catalunya fell through last summer.

Europa difference-maker

Despite his underwhelming domestic return, in Europe, Nico has shown his class and made the difference. He led the second-leg turnaround against Roma in the last 16, scoring twice as he was Player of the Match in the second leg at San Mames. He did the same against Rangers, scoring the all-important second goal which clinched his side’s place in the last four. It took him and Athletic one step closer to that dream final and the chance to become only the fifth team (after Real Madrid, Inter, Barcelona and Feyenoord) to win a European final in their own stadium.

“For me and for every Athletic fan in the world, reaching the final in Bilbao would be incredible,” he said. “It would be a dream. I’ve been playing for Athletic since I was a child and you always dream of winning trophies. Because of where the final is this year, the Europa League is a very special tournament for us. I don’t think anyone would understand this unless you are an Athletic fan.

“You saw what it was like when we won the Copa del Rey last year so can you imagine what it would be like if we won the Europa League in our own city? We have to dream. We have to believe. We have a spectacular group of players and I think this is the year. If we keep playing the way we have been in this tournament, we have a chance to reach that final and be champions.”

Fond memories

Next up on that journey is United, a team that evokes special memories for everyone involved with Athletic. The club’s last-16 victory over the Red Devils in 2011-12 remains their greatest moment in European football, and the team they met back then were a far cry from the current United, who Amorim admitted was “maybe the worst Manchester United team in history”. Sir Alex Ferguson was still in charge at Old Trafford, but Athletic, coached by Marcelo Bielsa, played them off the park in both legs.

“To go to Old Trafford and outplay them like that was unforgettable,” then-captain Andoni Iraola said. “At that time United had recently played in the Champions League final, they had won the league and were the best team in England. So the win made us think if we could play that way against Man United then we could do it against anyone.”

Iker Muniain, who scored Athletic’s third goal at Old Trafford, added: “For everyone that lived through that era it was incredible to beat a Manchester United packed full of stars. I’m sure that re-living it in some way will be very special for the fans.” Plenty of supporters do want to re-live it: 15,000 of them have applied for the 3,000 away tickets for the second leg.

Once in a lifetime

Nico Williams was nine years old at the time, but he is more than aware of the significance of those two games and wants to recreate memories of his own. He said after knocking Rangers out: “Every kid wants to play at Old Trafford, it’s a spectacular stadium. We have a great memory of Muniain’s goal there. We’ll try to do our best in the first leg at San Mames so we can go there with our claws sharpened and show them what Athletic is. Athletic has already won at Old Trafford. United is down in the league, but against Lyon they showed what they are capable of.”

That epic Lyon clash in the quarter-finals showed that United are both capable of enacting Amorim’s plan, destroying it with lapses of concentration and producing logic-defying escape acts, just as Ferguson’s side were.

The general consensus, however, is that this Athletic will be too strong for them. Sure, United did show remarkable team spirit by scoring three goals in seven minutes when all hope was gone in the previous round, but Athletic have shown much stronger belief by defying modernity and continuing to believe in their local region as their only source of players.

They have waited for their entire history for a moment like this, and they are not about to pass it up.