Now a Copa del Rey finalist, it’s easy to forget that the man who led Osasuna there from Segunda was once in the dugout for Champions League nights at Real Sociedad only a few years ago. Yet that is the case for Jagoba Arrasate.
His journey in the game started at Real Sociedad as a player. He came through the youth ranks before joining Eibar at the age of 19, though he would never debut for their first team. When he retired in 2007, before his 30th birthday, after touring several lower league Basque clubs, he seemed destined to go into coaching.
To start his journey, he worked as a coach with Berriatuko FT in the fourth tier of Spanish football before then joining Tercera side CD Elgoibar, then taking the move back to Anoeta to return to Real Sociedad and join their youth system.
He made a quick impression and in his first two seasons was promoted twice. It meant that by 2012, he was called into the first team set-up with Philippe Montanier. A year later, it would be Arrasate in the dugout.
Montanier led the team to a fourth-placed finish, qualifying for the Champions League, but turned down a contract renewal and left for Stade Rennais with his assistant, Michel Troin. Talks were held with Tata Martino, who would end up at Barcelona instead, but the decision was made to make an internal appointment and promote Arrasate.
Arrasate couldn’t have got off to a trickier start. Young prodigy Asier Illarramendi, one of the team’s brightest talents in the previous season, left for Real Madrid only weeks into his reign after his release clause was triggered for almost €40 million.
But that didn’t reflect on the pitch. With a team including Xabi Prieto, Claudio Bravo, Antoine Griezmann, Iñigo Martínez and Carlos Vela among others, he overcame Olympique Lyonnais 4-0 on aggregate in a European qualifier to make the Champions League group stage.
Sadly, success in Europe ended there. The group stage gave La Real a tough group including Manchester United, Bayer Leverkusen and Shakhtar Donetsk. In the end, they would fail to score a single goal across all six games.
The only highlight came as Arrasate produced a strong tactical display to shut out a Manchester United team coached by the man who would eventually replace him in the dugout, David Moyes, in a 0-0 draw.
In the Copa del Rey, Arrasate stunned many. Few expected the Basque side to be able to compete on so many fronts, but he pushed the team to a first semi-final in the competition since 1988.
Racing Santander’s strike ahead of a quarter-final second leg helped, and in the end it was Martino’s Barcelona who ended La Real’s charge in the competition.
In LaLiga, Arrasate’s reign was mixed. After winning on his debut with a 2-0 victory over Getafe, a run of seven without a win followed. But then they only lost one in 10, a 5-1 thrashing against Real Madrid. It included a Manager of the Month award in December after three games produced three wins with 10 goals scored and only one conceded.
But when things went wrong, they went badly wrong. That impressive streak came to an end with another 5-1 defeat, this time to Villarreal. In general, results remained positive, though. A 3-1 win over Barcelona was touted as revenge for Copa del Rey elimination and as one of the highlights of the season.
With the workload catching up with tired legs, March was when things started to go wrong. Shock defeats to Rayo Vallecano (3-2 at home) and Almería (4-3 away) dented hopes of a top four finish.
However, president Jokin Aperrabay had his mandate extended in December and one of his first big decisions was a show of faith in Arrasate, extending his contract to 2016 in April even as results went awry.
In the end, it was a seventh-placed finish, which put the team into the Europa League with two qualifying rounds, winning the first against Aberdeen before being beaten by Krasnodar. The first leg win, a 1-0 home victory, gave hope, but the season went wrong even in early August.
The opening day pit Real Sociedad against lowly Eibar, who had just won a miraculous promotion to Primera, and who stunned their big neighbours with a 1-0 win on the opening day of the season at Ipurua. Only four days later, the team fell to a 3-0 defeat in Russia.
Arrasate’s side did bounce back, beating Real Madrid 4-2 with a David Zurutuza double, but that was to be his last win in the job. Eight without a win would follow, leading to his dismissal with the team in 15th in November.
The coach had to drop to Numancia in Segunda the following summer for his next employment, leading the club from Soria to an unexpected play-off final, where Real Valladolid would emerge victorious.
His next step? To join Osasuna. And there, he would live happily ever after.