Maybe it’s the txuleton, Julen lopetegui jokes. Txuleton, the giant T-bone steak, is central not just to the food but also the culture of the Basque country, which is why it may not be such a huge leap to offer it up as an explanation for a footballing phenomenon: how a place so small can have an impact on the game so great, a generation of managers coming from a single corner of northern Spain. If once is chance, twice a coincidence and three times a pattern, this is something else again, something special, and it reaches right to the top.
Back in the late1990s, Mikel Arteta played for a local youth club called Antiguoko, whose pitch lies close to the beach in the city of San Sebastian, home of real Sociedad. He was not alone; among his team-mates there were a handful of other boys you will have heard of and men you will hear more from too. It’s not just that Xabi Alonso and Andoni Iraola also made it as players, as did team-mates Aritz Aduriz and Xabi’s brother Mikel, nor that they were internationals with over1,400 professional games between them; it is that there was something stirred inside them and they too are now coaches.
Arteta’s Arsenal team