Childhood friends Muniain and Eguaras face off for first time in La Liga

Iker Muniain and Iñigo Eguaras grew up in the same Pamplona neighborhood, separated by nothing more than a traffic circle. They met at four years old and played together on the same youth team, the Txantrea, before being summoned to Athletic Bilbao's academy at twelve. The club president called them into his office with news that would reshape their childhoods: they were moving to Bilbao, 160 kilometers away, to live in a cold dormitory housed in an old seminary. It was, as Eguaras would later describe it, a mixture of joy and sorrow.

At thirteen, both boys experienced something that bound them in ways football never could. A teammate, Iñaki Gallastegi, died in an accident. They were young enough not to fully understand what had happened, but old enough to feel its weight completely. Years later, Eguaras would recall the moment with precision: the embrace, the tears, the incomprehension of why this had happened to someone they trained with every day, someone who shared their dormitory, their meals, their dreams. "It was very hard," he said. "The hardest day of our lives." Away from family, surrounded by other displaced teenagers, they had only each other and the staff at the residence to help them process the loss. The experience forced them to grow up faster than they should have, to see life as something fragile and uncertain.

They remained close through everything that followed. Muniain stayed at Athletic, beginning his first-team career at sixteen and building a career that would make him one of the club's most recognizable players. Eguaras took a different path. After three years in Athletic's reserve team, he never received the call to the senior squad. He spent nine seasons in Spain's second division, moving between Sabadell, Mirandés, Zaragoza, and finally Almería, the club that would eventually carry him back to La Liga after nearly a decade away. The two remained friends throughout, part of the same group from their neighborhood, seeing each other when Muniain returned to Pamplona or during holidays, maintaining the bond that had formed when they were barely old enough to tie their own boots.

On Friday, September 30th, 2022, they would face each other for the first time as professional rivals in La Liga. The match would be played at San Mamés, Athletic's stadium, the place where Eguaras had only ever played once before, wearing a different shirt. Both men had spoken by phone during the week leading up to the fixture. Muniain, playing as a midfielder for Athletic, joked with Eguaras, now a midfielder for Almería: "Don't get confused and pass it to me." It was the kind of banter that only comes from decades of knowing someone completely.

For Eguaras, the match carried weight beyond the usual rivalry. "It's special to return where I grew up as a player," he said. He had spent formative years at Lezama, Athletic's training complex, and would now walk back into that stadium as an opponent. He would see people he hadn't faced in years, would stand on the same pitch where he'd trained as a teenager, would compete against the friend he'd grown up with. His family would be there. The friends from Txantrea, the same group that had remained constant through everything, would be watching. "When Iker goes to Pamplona, or during vacations, we usually spend days together," Eguaras explained. "Off the field we're part of the same friend group and we see each other whenever we can."

There was one regret that lingered. Eguaras had always wished he could have played alongside Muniain at Athletic, could have made the jump to the first team the way his childhood friend had done. "It's the thorn I have stuck in my side," he admitted. "After spending three years in the reserve team, I was left with the feeling that something was missing for me not to be given the opportunity in the first team." But he harbored no doubt about Muniain's trajectory. "I knew he would get where he has gotten, because the conditions he had were different from the rest." Eguaras had watched from a distance as his friend became a fixture of Athletic's midfield, accumulating the kind of statistics that come from consistency and talent.

But Eguaras also carried the memory of Iñaki Gallastegi with him, a weight that never fully lifted. "It was very difficult because I was at school all day and at training with him, and it was hard because I didn't have my family nearby to help me," he reflected. "The people at the residence helped us a lot. It was hard to go back to class and see that he wasn't there. It's a learning experience. It makes you mature and see life differently because he didn't have the luck to achieve his goals, and here we are also to do what he couldn't." That Friday at San Mamés, Eguaras would play not just for himself or for Almería, but carrying forward the dreams of someone who never got the chance to chase his own.