Up the Armeros:
Eibar’s Improbable La Liga Story Continues
A small, Spanish club team that’s suddenly found itself competing with La Liga greats, may finally be conquering windmills.
By the time Victor Camarasa put Levante up 2-nil at the Ipurua Municipal Stadium on the 4th of October, the dream was already in full motion. But this wasn’t his nor his team’s dream. It belonged to their opponents, a small football club located in Spain’s Basque Country, about 70 kilometers from the French border. A little club called SD Eibar.
Immediately after halftime, Eibar began chipping away at Levante’s two-goal lead. Before Les Granotes (The Frogs, Levante’s nickname) could even force their studs into the turf, the Armeros (the Gunsmiths, Eibar’s nickname) had struck. A serendipitous deflection off of a Javi Lara cross in the 46th minute had sent the ball past Levante goalkeeper Diego Mariño, who could do nothing to stop it. Nor could he stop what happened next.
A foul just to the left of Levante’s penalty area resulted in an Eibar freekick. Lara chipped the set-piece towards the top of the eighteen-yard box, the ball appearing to float through space for an eternity before falling to the foot of Saúl Berjon, who cracked an explosive, Puskás-worthy volley past Mariño and into the net. Eibar would go behind via a 79th minute Victor Casadesus goal before notching a last-gasp equalizer in injury time through Federico Piovaccari. It was a dramatic, if not miraculous, comeback from the Basques. They may not have grabbed all three points, but they sure did fly.
The fable continued in November as the Armeros prevailed away to both Rayo Vallecano and Celta Vigo. After going up 2–0 against Rayo, thanks to goals from Piovaccari and Mikel Arruabarrena, Eibar were given another scare as the hosts fought their way back level in the second half. But the resilient Vallecanos could only repel the Basque spirit for so long. In minute 88, an Eibar counter resulted in a millimeter-perfect cross from leftback Abraham that caught the near-post run of Arruabarrena, who neatly side-footed the winner past Rayo keeper David Cobeño. This time, all three points went to the Gunsmiths.
Originally formed in 1940, Eibar is a microbe of world football. Their ground, the Municipal de Ipurua Stadium, holds a capacity of 5,250 people. That’s over 80,000 fewer than Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu and over 90,000 fewer than Barcelona’s Camp Nou.
For over 75 years, the Armeros have trudged between Spain’s lower leagues. While the vast majority of their time has been spent in the second and fourth divisions (that’s 26 years in the Segunda A and 28 in the Tercera), six of their last eight seasons have been exhausted in the Segunda B, Spain’s third tier. (If there’s a claim-to-fame to be had at Eibar, it’s that Spanish World Cup winners David Silva and Xabi Alonso both had short loan spells at the club early in their careers.)
Eibar had never tasted La Liga football until this year.
The club now finds itself operating at the pinnacle of Spanish football, in 11th place. They’re alongside Real and Barca in the table, facing off against Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi on the pitch. Most still don’t even know they exist, but they do. And they’re quite good.
Eibar nearly missed out on life at the top before it even began, though. Upon gaining promotion to La Liga by winning Spain’s second tier last season, the club was given the unwelcome news that they were in violation of the league’s Sociedad Anónima Deportiva regulations (specifically, a law called Real Decreto 1251/1999). Basically, Eibar needed to adhere to these financial prerequisites of an S.A.D., or a public-limited sports company, which meant their overall capital needed to amount to at least 25 percent of the average expenses of all clubs in the Segunda A division. If Eibar were to fail at reaching that threshold, they would not only be prohibited from joining La Liga, but they’d also be relegated to the third division.
The curious part of the entire story is that in an economically afflicted country like Spain, where many clubs have declared bankruptcy over the past decade and some of the larger clubs carry debts into the hundreds of millions, Eibar remains veritably debt-free. In a June interview with Fortune, club president Alex Aranzábal maintained his organization’s healthy but detrimental manner of business.
“We always had it clear that a football club has to be managed like a business, with economic rigor and seriousness,” said Aranzábal, who also owns a PhD in economics from the University of Deusto in Bilbao.
“We didn’t want to do it any old way, you know, with rich Arabs or Russian millionaires. What we wanted to do, inside the Eibar model, was continue to be a club of the people.”
Aranzábal’s business ethos has proven to be sound. Through vast public relations outreach and media coverage, Eibar raised enough funds to qualify themselves for the Primera. They started a crowdfunding campaign that allowed people to buy shares of the club at 50 euros each. Their required goal of €1.7 million by August was well surpassed, with funders from 38 different nationalities contributing to the cause. The total currently sits at €1.98 million euros.
“It has been like something out of a movie,” Aranzábal said during Eibar’s official La Liga inauguration presser. “I’m delighted for the people of the town, for the people around the club, for those able to see what we’ve done and also for those who haven’t.”
One of the more captivating members of this year’s Eibar squad is Javi Lara. A Cordoba youth product, Lara has played for 12 different clubs across Spain in the past eight years before settling in the province Gipuzkoa (in which Eibar sits) over the summer. Blessed with the face of Leif Garrett and the feet of Mikhail Baryshnikov, the right-sided midfielder has left his mark on most of the Armeros’ matches this campaign. He scored their opening goal of the season against Real Sociedad back in August and also hit the cross that deflected into Mariño’s net sparking the comeback against Levante. He plays the game with verve and personality, and is nearly impossible to dislike.
After Eibar’s opening goal against Levante, Lara appeared unable to mask his amusement, like one of those insecure 12-year-old Little League shortstops you see revealing a timid grin after turning a 6–4–3 double play at Williamsport. It was an uncontrollable mark of pure gratification. He knows exactly what he’s taking part in here. Whether it was the hoodoo of the ricocheted goal that delighted Lara, or the blatant absurdity of the occasion itself, the 28-year-old’s presence within that instant is arresting in real time. A candidness not often seen by professional athletes, particularly in tense moments. Just try to watch it without showing some teeth.
Of course, top-flight promotion carries with it sizable executive tasks, mainly the acquiring of new players. And with a fairly green team like Eibar, experience comes at a premium. Which is why manager Gaizka Garritano — an ex-Armero himself — “chose” to make a variety of transfers over the summer. He signed Derek Boateng from Rayo Vallecano and Dani Nieto from Barcelona, both on permanent deals, and brought in Manu del Moral from Sevilla, Federico Piovaccari from Sampdoria, Didac Vilá from AC Milan, Abraham from Real Zaragoza, and Raúl Navas from Real Sociedad, all on loan. Five more free agents were snatched up, including Borja Ekiza, previously of Athletic Bilbao, and Berjon, one of heroes against Levante.
Although these new names represent a growing standard at Eibar, the club still leans heavily on their regulars, the ones who got them to the mount.
There’s Xabi Irureta, the Biscay-born journeyman goalkeeper who led the Armeros to the Segunda title last year by only conceding 26 goals in 39 games and winning the Zamora trophy (the award given to the netminder with the lowest goals-to-games ratio in the league). In front of him you’ll find Raul Albentosa, a 6-foot-4 central defender whose career has largely been spent on the “B” teams of clubs whose “A” teams couldn’t even make it to La Liga. Now the prime stalwart of the Eibar’s defense, Albentosa has also gotten on the scoresheet this year. His debut Primera goal came in September when his header sealed a 2–0 victory against Elche, the same organization from which he developed as a youth. Both Irureta and Albentosa are the only two Armeros to have played every minute of every league match this season.
There’s also the team’s captain and number 10, Mikel Arruabarrena. Having once donned the Spain shirt for the U-16 national side, as well as having plied his trade abroad at Legia Warsaw in Poland, the 31-year-old is the wise owl of the group. Technically, Arruabarrena’s skillset resembles that of another Basque old boy, Fernando Llorente; however, Garritano has chosen to draw the forward back into an attacking-mid position where he can hold the ball up and bring his wide teammates into play on counters. The experienced goalscorer is inexpendable to Eibar, up front or not.
Then you have Dani Garcia, Jon Errasti, Eneko Bóveda — all Eibar veterans and all Basque-born. They ultimately offer the story of this team a rare identity, and one that’s easily relatable: local warriors patrolling their land with pride and passion. It’s a story that, while as old as time, we so scarcely see on the pitches of elite world football anymore. Outsourcing has become the status quo and for good reason, but it’s always refreshing to see when the lads stay home and stick together.
So, if Lara and company seem inspired this season, it’s because they are. And not entirely for the reasons you may think. Sure, each of these 23 players might have enough perspective to recognize the uniqueness of the lightning-in-a-bottle situation they’ve found themselves in, but for many of the Eibar players, this is an opportunity to actually become professional footballers as they once imagined. Not tradesmen, leisurely striking gold in a fairy tale, but actual full-fledged sportsmen. Every matchday is a grand audition for each of them. Perform and maybe they can avert relegation. Impress and maybe that call from Athletic Club or Real Sociedad comes next. That might remove some of the traditional magic from the story, but it adds a hell of a lot of humanity to it.
