Just under a year ago, when Iker Muniain was preparing to make his next move after an entire life, boy and man, at Athletic Club of Bilbao, the Basque star did what most of us would do and consulted with those closest to him. Specifically, he asked their opinion on his decision to leave behind Bilbao and his home nation and head some 11,000 kilometres down south to Argentina, a place where economic stability is glimpsed about as frequently as Bigfoot riding a unicorn and where the local football features tackles that would chill the blood of your average La Liga player.
On top of that, Muniain was proposing a transfer to San Lorenzo, a club which in recent years has been a byword for institutional chaos and on-pitch mediocrity with fresh scandal lurking around every corner. Suffice to say, his decision raised a few eyebrows.
“As always I listened to all of the opinions from my family and my friends,” the veteran explained to Movistar+ in a forthcoming documentary. “Honestly some of them told me that I was a little bit crazy, to think it through, that there were other, financially better, more peaceful options.” Happily for the Cuervo, he turned a deaf ear to those admittedly reasonable pleas: “You have to be guided by what's inside you, and this is what I was dreaming about.”
It is safe to say that the dream in question would have closely resembled the rapturous scenes from Bajo Flores last Saturday. Benched in injury time after another intense, back-breaking performance, Muniain turned conductor on the sidelines as he geed up a Nuevo Gasómetro filled to the brim with jubilant San Lorenzo fans, belting out hit after hit in the terraces to celebrate their side's last-gasp win over Tigre. Somehow, to the disbelief even of many of those very fans, the Cuervo fight on to live another day in the Liga Profesional de Fútbol, with just three games now standing between them and potentially their first league title since 2013.
This is a team, you may recall, that at the end of 2024 and with Muniain's late assistance was scrambling to get away from the bottom of the table, eventually finishing a dismal 24th. To escape that particular predicament San Lorenzo turned to a familiar, grizzled face, that of Miguel Ángel Russo: a man who at the age of 69 is older than the late Pope Francis' successor to the Holy See (this time he is not a Cuervo fan) and who started his coaching career all the way back in 1990, when Muniain was still just a twinkle in his parents' eyes.
Russo chose to build his team around the ex-Spain international while pulling out all the stops to help him back to his best, allowing the midfielder to return to his nation of birth this summer to recover from a muscle tear which kept him out of the first half of this Liga campaign. Once recovered and ready to return, Russo presented Muniain with the captain's armband, a huge gesture which has been repaid by the player's passion and commitment to his adopted team.
He provides a touch of class in a team which is more sturdy than stellar, but which has proved extremely hard to beat. San Lorenzo grabbed fourth place in their Liga group with just three defeats in 16 games, putting up nine clean sheets and with only one of their seven victories coming via a margin of more than one goal.
Unpaid wages, FIFA embargoes, deceased pontiffs, presidential bribery scandals: nothing seems to be able to distract the Cuervo from their mission to grind out results and keep slogging forward. An even greater test lies ahead this Monday in the shape of Argentinos Juniors, one of the form sides this year in the Liga, but with the wily Russo on the bench and Muniain driving his team on, no team will fancy taking on San Lorenzo in these play-offs.
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