Why I follow Athletic Club’s striker

It is funny how you come across people in football who bring back memories of the past.

That is certainly the case for me with Athletic Club striker Gorka Guruzeta, who is part of the Basque side’s travelling squad for Thursday’s eagerly anticipated Europa League semi-final second leg at Old Trafford.

The 28-year-old was an unused substitute for our 3-0 victory at San Mames last week and will hope to feature this time around for Ernesto Valverde’s men.

It will be interesting if he does appear in the game because Guruzeta is somebody I recall well and have followed on social media for the past seven-and-a-half years.

You see I was covering our Reserves’ Premier League International Cup tie against Athletic Club in 2017, when he caught my eye.

The powerful striker hit a superb goal to open the scoring in that fixture, only for Ricky Sbragia’s side to rally and win 2-1, thanks to goals from James Wilson and Ethan Hamilton.

Wilson and Hamilton have enjoyed good careers in the game and spent this season with Northampton Town and Lincoln City respectively.

I rated both highly, with Willo looking electric when deservedly breaking into our senior side, but could not ignore the talents of Guruzeta and his Athletic team-mate Inigo Vicente, who sparkled in this particular tie and is now with Racing Santander.

Although Guruzeta was withdrawn at the interval, he had done enough to convince me to track his progress. It was not unusual to follow a youngster who seemed to have huge potential on Twitter, as it was called at the time, and I did the same with Jack Grealish, when he performed excellently for Aston Villa’s second string against United, in another game I reported on.

The trouble was, on this occasion, I was also providing updates on the match for United’s official Twitter account and had forgotten to log out and switch profiles on the day afterwards, when following Guruzeta as planned.

The realisation that I had added a rival player to the Reds’ list of pretty exclusive names the club were following caused the colour to drain from my face and a shiver to run down my spine. Even though it had only been a matter of about half an hour or so, I am fully aware of the fuss a simple error of judgement like this can cause. I quickly dreaded speculative transfer stories claiming United were now chasing the signature of the Basque youngster popping up all over the web.

A panicked call to the communications department to own up to the mistake was followed by a nervous wait to see if this could have been yet another excuse to add to the never-ending rumour mill concerning the Reds and potential new signings.

Thankfully, I got away with it. The centre-forward, who had played with levels of aggression and commitment that really impressed, would only be followed on my personal account, going forward.

Hence, I have noted his progress via his posts in my timeline over the years.

He may have left the San Mames club in 2020, and had spells with Sabadell and Amorebieta, but returned to become a top marksman in La Liga.

Guruzeta has scored in this term’s Europa League, in a 3-0 win over Elfsborg, and has racked up 11 appearances in the competition. While I hope he does get a runout in the second leg, I sincerely hope he will not be finding the net against us this time around.

Yet it will be interesting to watch on from the press box and think that here is someone who did fulfil the potential they showed so many years ago in the under-age level.

The opinions in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Manchester United Football Club.

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