Yeah, seems a dumb caveat in retrospect. In my experience though Spanish Basque think of themselves as Basque and French Basque think of themselves as French. Massive generalization with holes big enough that I’m sure people will drive trucks through it, but I guess that was where I was going.
Off the top of my head, and massively biased towards the modern period thus largely ignoring Bilbao’s strongest periods, and the early Uruguayan world cup winners who came from the Basque region…
Zubizaretta/Arconada
Azpilicueta, Goikoetxea, Javi Martinez, Lizzarazu
Deschamps, Xabi, Mendieta, Bakero,
Pichichi, Higuain
I know in addition to the two I picked there were a few others in Cruyff’s Barca team who were Basque…Tixi, the other Goikoetxea
Double Hendrick’s and tonic if you can pronounce all of those names.
I was acting a gobshite with a nice guy from Bilbao; I’d struggle to name an XI - vague memories of Zubizarreta, Lizzaru, Deschamps and Mendieta, and of course I have an eye on The Butcher of Bilbao.
Xabi, Arteta and Martinez are players I enjoyed watching. Amorebieta was out of his time; not a great defender by any means, but an absolute prick, in the way you want your CB to be a prick.
I like Higuain, sometimes; he upset Florentino Pérez, who said he “looks like he works hard” when Real players should be “swans” - working hard, under the surface, but effortlessly graceful above.
I’d have Gundogan in for Gini in Klopp’s team.
I’d have Ashley Cole in for Marcelo in Jose’s team.
I’d find a place for Modric in Carlo’s team (Carlo did it himself!), even if it means instead of Zidane or Ibrahimovic. Also hard to forget Seedorf.
I’d remove Aguero (not Pep’s favourite type anyway I don’t think) from Pep’s team and give it to Villa or David Silva.
To be fair, that season, Sneijder was utterly brilliant. It’s not only maybe which players played, but which were more influential at a certain time, etc. Carlo had Zidane, but I don’t think he had the best Zidane. It also depends if we’re going by a team that would make sense tactically (doesn’t have to, as we’ll never find out), or not.
If we’re using the Sneijder rule, that it’s not how good the player was but how influential they were for the manager at the time, then surly Sahin is one of the stronger shouts for Dortmund players, and ahead of Gundogan.
