A certain vintage

Aritz Aduriz never imagined that football would be his path. But at 36 he is still getting better and shows no signs of stopping

“I didn’t want to be a football player,” Aritz Aduriz admits, eyes widening beneath a plucked brow and contemporary hairstyle, shaved at the sides, gelled on top. A wry smile reveals his sparkling white teeth as he sports the new shirt of his club, Athletic Bilbao.

At the outset he may not have imagined it, but at 36-years-old, Aduriz remains a football player, and a brilliant one, too. He’s supposed to be winding down, contemplating life away from the game, preparing for a new start. Instead he's aged like a fine wine and today, speaking to Goal, he feels like it is the first day of his career.

“I felt a bit nervous coming in this morning,” he admits. He shouldn't worry, because he is the star of the show. Aduriz has been selected alongside Athletic's other major star, Iker Muniain – some 12 years his junior – to promote the launch of their kit for the new season.

“I didn’t expect to be a professional footballer.
I never dreamed of a life in football.”

Aduriz cemented his status as Europe’s nouveau chic centre-forward last November, when he became Spain’s oldest goalscorer at the age of 35 years and 225 days. Some seven months previously, he’d found the net against Italy on what was just his second appearance for his country – six years after his international debut.

Strikers are supposed to slow up heading into their thirties; Aduriz has done the opposite, only really shifting into top gear when he re-joined Athletic in 2012, for what was his third stint at the club where his career began in earnest a decade before. Having failed to nail down a regular starting place in two seasons at Valencia, Aduriz just wanted to play.

He signed six months before his 32nd birthday. By his 33rd, he’d hit 18 goals in his first season and was well on the way to matching that total in his second. The following campaign saw him score 26. And then he hit 30 at the age of 35, an astounding feat in one of Europe's most respected leagues.

Then-Athletic coach Ernesto Valverde labelled him a 'special case' when he signed a new deal in December.

“We need to learn from him,” he insisted.

“We need to learn from his tenacity and the fact he has never given up. Aduriz has a lot to teach us.”

Aduriz believes he, too, is still learning.

“Every season, the goals are always the same. The main one is improving what you have done previously,” he maintains. Few thought it would be possible in his case. But then nothing about his long journey to the top of European football has been conventional. It took a little longer than usual to really get going – he made his first appearance in La Liga at 24 – but then so did his start in the game.

Football is the game of Bilbao, with the biggest clubs and best players invariably emanating from dense urban centres, where young hopefuls come together to compete for the space necessary to express themselves.

Aduriz’s native La Concha beach in San Sebastian was a world apart. There were no purpose-built pitches on which the locals could hone their skills. Indeed, the spaces where Aduriz and his friends would learn the more formal version of the sport were only available once every fortnight, when the Mediterranean tide retreated for just a few hours.

The locals would descend during those brief respites from the warm sea, dragging out goal posts and hastily marking out a playing area with sticks, stones or the studs of their mostly unused boots. Football was an infrequent privilege.

So Aduriz spent his time doing other things. He ran cross-country, he surfed and he played tennis, all to a high level – at nine years of age he was the runner-up in the national cross-country skiing championship.

When he says that he never expected to become a professional footballer, it is perhaps because he never had idols to whom he could aspire; his childhood included just one trip to see local club Real Sociedad. But while his appreciation of the game was less conventional than others, the enjoyment he received from it was obvious to him.

“I did like the ball,” he concedes. “The ball is the first thing you like when you are a child.”


So every time the tide left, the ball arrived. He quickly stood out and starred locally alongside the likes of a young Mikel Arteta and Xabi Alonso. At 19, Aduriz officially entered the game at the third tier of Spanish football, before quickly moving onto Athletic’s B team. That’s where it all began, where it all started again and where it will end - eventually. Not just yet.

“I always say the same. I am enjoying playing football and I think that’s the most important thing. I am pleased to go to training every day. I do love playing games, competing. I just love it.”

“Being able to play in such amazing stadium like San Mames, in front of our people - that’s incredible!”

He loves Athletic, too. “The best souvenir of all is just being a part of the club itself. It is something wonderful.” And they love him. Aduriz cemented his status as a club icon in 2015, when he hit a 14-minute hat-trick against Barcelona to earn a remarkable 4-0 victory at San Mames in the first leg of the Spanish Super Cup. He then equalised at the Camp Nou as a 1-1 draw gave Athletic the title.

It’s a standout moment of a remarkable and unusual career. “I have many memories, when you make your debut… but it is true there is one more important than others: the Supercup.

“Winning a title is something that is very hard to do here… but the best is just the daily routine. How you live with your team-mates and being able to play in such amazing stadium like San Mames, in front of our people. That’s incredible.”

So is the life and career of a man who never intended any of this.

The full New Balance Athletic Club 2017/18 kit collection including the Elite Player Jerseys and Replica Jerseys are available at www.newbalance.co.uk/football