Oihan Sancet’s treble exorcises Athletic’s penalty pain against Girona - chof 360 news

Paulo Gazzaniga rapped his studs against a post, tapped his fingertips against the crossbar and flashed the smile that broke so many hearts. In the final minutes before Athletic Club faced Girona on Saturday afternoon, Ernesto Valverde was asked who would take the penalties and gave an answer almost as loaded as the question: “Only one thing’s certain,” the coach said, “it won’t be me.” Less than an hour later, it had actually happened, which maybe it had to, another man standing before a screen inviting that guy back into their lives. So now here they were again, Iñaki Williams on the spot with the ball under his arm, Girona’s goalkeeper a few yards away wearing a look so knowing, it had a PhD.

Oh, he knew. They all did: the 48,261 people in San Mamés stands, the 22 on the pitch, everyone on the bench. Williams, especially. The last time he had faced Gazzaniga, four months earlier, had hit him hard, the striker insisting he felt responsible for a 2-1 defeat. “This can’t happen,” he said, but it had. At 1-1, Gazzaniga had saved his penalty and that wasn’t the half of it: he had already stopped Alex Berenguer’s penalty and when he was spotted off the line this time, Athletic allowed to try for a third time, Williams asked Ander Herrera to take it instead – so Gazzaniga saved that too, a unique hat-trick completed before Cristhian Stuani scored Girona’s 99th-minute winner.

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With a penalty.

This time, Williams wasn’t actually taking it; Oihan Sancet was. “I’m first on the list, I knew it would be me,” Sancet said after. In Girona, he had given the first to Álex Berenguer because his teammate had wanted it, the confidence flooding through him and right out again. By the time they had been given the second and the third, Williams missing before the retake offered a shot at redemption that Herrera passed up with a penalty so poor it didn’t so much need saving as scooping off the floor, Sancet had gone off again.

Yet if the kick was handed over with a little more conviction than in Girona, if Williams taking the ball was a ploy, protection, designed to distract and reduce the pressure, everyone still felt it. Gazzaniga’s presence alone had turned their legs to jelly then, Berenguer, Williams and Herrera unable to function properly, and now he was smiling, the bastard. He had already made a brilliant save from Williams and Montilivi was on every mind, as Williams stepped away and Sancet stood there alone. This, said commentator José Sanchís, was like the final battle with a video game monster, probably not intending to conjure up images of the Duck on Chuckie Egg. Hitchcock had written it, one Bilbao paper said.

Sancet took two slow steps left, four fast steps forward and ... smashed it into the top right corner. No pissing about. All that buildup blown away, all these words gone with the wind. This was Indiana Jones watching the swordsman twirl his scimitar before shooting him, El Correo wrote – a scene, by the way, that had more to do with dysentery than scriptwriting, Harrison Ford unable to stay away from the toilet for long. “I’m happy, and all the more so after what happened in Girona,” Sancet said. Catharsis, they called it. Ghosts exorcised, heart mended, time to move on. And so they did, and how.

“The goal hurt them,” Valverde said; it also made Athletic Athletic. Suddenly, they were everywhere, someone opening the Volta Dam. The ball had smashed into the net on 41.02. It was back in play 29sec before Gazzaniga had to reach to stop the ball squeezing under the bar and 34 more when he made an astonishing save from Óscar de Marcos. Another catch, another corner, another cross, and Girona were being swept away, the fouls desperate, a way to breathe if only for a second. This was relentless.

On 45.42, into added time at the end of the first half, Athletic scored a second, Berenguer standing up a perfect cross for Sancet to head in his second, and still they didn’t stop. Girona kicked off and within 11 seconds, Yangel Herrera had been caught. Within 16, Williams’ shot screeched past the post, a big, deep huuuy roaring round. It was all Girona could do to get to half time at all, they had only been playing again for 47 seconds when Adama Boiro’s shot was blocked, and if the storm did eventually ease, there was no way back. With 12 minutes left, Athletic scored, Sancet neatly dinking the ball over Gazzaniga, the man who completed a hat-trick four months ago conceding one now.

The goals were a perfect portrait of Athletic, a pack that win the ball more often and higher up than anyone else in La Liga, all intent and purpose. “We risked a lot going very high to press them in their own area, but I think it’s good for us to be there; and whether we’re very high or very low, we have to go together,” Valverde said.

For the first goal, Williams had stretched to cut out the keeper’s throw, Mikel Jauregizar had taken it off Miguel Gutiérrez, dashed into the area and been brought down, the VAR finally awarding the penalty. For the second, they cornered Girona and mugged them, one, two, three, four, five players closed down by their own penalty area before Berenguer lifted it to Sancet. For the third, it was Jhon Solís they hunted. Almost before he realised what had happened, took down the number of that bus, the ball was in the net: two touches, too fast to stop, and Sancet turned superbly, a gorgeous subtle touch in the storm, to provide the finish.

Sancet was withdrawn late to a standing ovation, his name chanted. There has always been something a bit special about him, a skinny skilful kid who joined the club’s academy from Osasuna in 2015. “He’s decisive for us, when he’s right,” Valverde said. He had missed 11 games this season through injury, four of them in the league – when he has played, he has often done so through pain in his ankle – and they have missed him. He may not get noticed outside Bilbao and – a bit like with Berenguer, who has nine assists – there are others who grab the attention but Athletic are a different team with him. The technique is special, the timing even better, arriving from behind the forwards.

The man who scored in the Copa del Rey final last year, made his debut five seasons ago, and has racked up over 150 games in primera, Sancet is still only 24. This was his third hat-trick for Athletic: since Lionel Messi departed, no one in Spain has scored more. Only one player currently in La Liga ever has, and that’s Antoine Griezmann. At Athletic only two players have as many in half a century: Aritz Aduriz and Julen Guerrero. These three goals took him to 11 in the league this the season, already his best total – and more than any Spaniard – and kept Athletic in a Champions League place, four points off Barcelona. “With Sancet, the party is guaranteed,” ran the headline in AS, which may have been just a little pointed.

“Bat, bi, hiru, hiru gol eta hiru puntu”, Sancet said as he set off at the end: one, two, three goals, three goals and three points. It had been the perfect night, Valverde said. A big, convincing win against a Champions League team, and a symbolic one too, entirely deserved and done their way. By the end, Athletic had taken 23 shots, Girona three. They had introduced two more debutants as well, the 37th and 38th under Valverde, going back to the day he gave Andoni Iraola his first game.

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Here it was Endika Buján and Maroan Sannadi, the latter signed from Alavés via Barakaldo where he was on loan and going straight from the third tier to the first where he left quite an impact, fascinating everyone: 6ft 4in, shoulders so wide you could spell out his name and still leave room for a Kapow! which would fit nicely. Or maybe they could add his nicknames: the Elephant, or the Emperor. He set up Sancet for what could have been the hat-trick before it actually arrived, there was a run that brought to mind Jonah Lomu marauding along with a family full of Underwoods hanging off him, and he just couldn’t stop smiling. “My life flashed before my eyes; I’ve waited the whole of it for a moment like this,” Sannadi said.

As for the rest of them, they had waited for this too, if not quite so long, and it was big. Athletic were recently knocked out of the Copa del Rey, losing their first single-legged tie in five years, and that really hurt, but they finished second in the Europa League table, level with Lazio at the top, their eyes on a final that will be held at San Mamés. And while that has had an impact domestically – they have won just one of eight league games after playing in Europe – they are also fourth, which would be their highest finish in over a decade, their joint-highest this century.

They have beaten Real Madrid and Real Sociedad, have a fortnight without midweek games, currently occupy a Champions League place and on the weekend when a draw in the Madrid derby opened up the title race for Barcelona, leaving the top three on 50, 49, and 48 points, might even have been entitled to ask: What about us? They are as close to Barcelona – four points – as Villarreal are to them. “A lo bajini,” Williams likes to say: they’re going quietly, under the radar, but they are there. No one in La Liga has gone as long without being beaten, after all: it’s 15 games now, a run that goes all the way back to October and the last time Paulo Gazzaniga stood smiling before them.