Unai Simón was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aitor Paredes is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Sevilla will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Athletic Bilbao were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
A brace, and Oihan Sancet takes the afternoon — 9.43
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Oihan Sancet provided it, and the 9.43 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Marked 9.14. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Athletic Bilbao.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Aitor Paredes falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
19 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Maroan Sannadi will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Athletic Bilbao escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Unai Simón was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aitor Paredes is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Álex Berenguer was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.54. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Athletic Bilbao this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Andrés León has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Luis Sanz has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Vicente Herrero has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
In brief
SquadAitor Paredes falls out with a teammate over standards
398 appearances across 12 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Unai Simón was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The phone has started ringing about Urko Izeta again, and this time the name on the line is Albacete. Athletic Bilbao are listening politely and promising nothing.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aitor Paredes is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.