Iker Muniain holds the record for the youngest player to appear and then a week later score for Athletic Bilbao from Spain's La Liga. The Spanish Football Association have high hopes for this lad and so do we.
PROFILE: |  |
Club | Athletic Bilboa |
Squad No | 27 |
Nationality | Spanish |
Age | 18 |
Height | 1.69m |
Weight | 63kg |
Career Record: Club U21 | 91 apps 14 goals 2 apps 0 goals |
BACKGROUND
Iker Muniain is one in a long line of future senior national players for Spain that have come directly from the youth academies of Spanish Football Clubs. As we have seen recently with Barcelona, most clubs in Spain prefer to focus on building young players through their respective Youth Academics because instead of spending huge sums of money on success, the emphasis is on building a climate of success through already established means. Athletic Bilbao is one of Spain’s interesting clubs, as they only focus on developing talent in the Basque region. The policy of the club insists on developing players locally and this allows them to ingrain the culture of the club in these young players.
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| The youngest player to score for Athletic Bilbao Muniain started his professional career with an UEFA Europa League match against BSC Young Boys on June 30th 2009 and became the youngest player in Athletic’ history to make his professional debut at the age of 16 years, 7 months and 18 days. The week after this match, he scored his first competitive goal against the same opponents and helped Athletic into the group stage of the tournament.  |
Since his debut in 2009, Muniain has grown in importance every year and in the 2010-2011 season which currently ended, he inspired his team to a 6th place finish in La Liga, an astonishing achievement considering the policies of the club and ensured another season of Europa League football. Muniain, who is nicknamed “Bart Simpson” in the dressing room, featured in 34 matches and contributed 5 goals in 2010-2011, completing his best season in a Bilbao shirt.
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| Can Spanish domination of world football continue at the Uefa U21 Championships. If they are to win the tournament, then Muniain is intergral to them doing so |
Iker Muniain is deployed predominantly as a left-sided winger for Athletic, which allows him to use his prodigious skills to cut inside and shoot. Muniain is very direct and loves to run at defenders, which presents great difficulty for them with his skills. There have been instances where is over elaborates and this may be his one vice at the moment. His inexperience and attitude has been spoken about by the Manager, but as he gets older, he will mature and learn from those experiences.
If you want to form your own opinions, have a look at this skills and goals compilation of Iker Muniain and don't forget to comment:
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