Ander Iturraspe · Biography

On 30 May 2014, at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán stadium in Seville, Ander Iturraspe Derteano played the full ninety minutes of a friendly that Spain won 2-0 against Bolivia. It was his senior debut for the Spain national team, with Vicente del Bosque in charge and the World Cup in Brazil a few weeks away. Iturraspe was born on 8 March 1989 in Abadiño, Biscay. A defensive midfielder, he played almost his whole career at Athletic Club, making 320 competitive appearances for them between 2008 and 2019, and finished it at RCD Espanyol.

Youth years at Lezama

He started at Matiena, a local club, in the 1998-99 season. In 1999, aged ten, he joined Athletic's academy, though he went back to play for the Abadiño side between 2003 and 2004. He returned to Lezama in 2004 and came through the youth ranks until 2007. That summer he moved into senior football with CD Basconia in the Spanish fourth tier, the Tercera División, playing 30 games and scoring once in 2007-08. In 2008 he stepped up to Bilbao Athletic, the reserve side, where he made 40 appearances and scored one goal until 2010 while also starting to train and travel with the first team.

La Liga debut under Caparrós

Joaquín Caparrós handed him his debut on 14 September 2008, in a 0-0 draw away to Málaga. His second appearance came off the bench in a 2-0 home win over Real Valladolid. In his early seasons he split his minutes between the first team and the reserves, and his role in midfield grew step by step. In 2009 Athletic reached the Copa del Rey final, which they lost 4-1 to FC Barcelona at Mestalla, and he is listed in that runner-up squad.

The Bielsa and Valverde years

Marcelo Bielsa took over in 2011, and the 2011-12 campaign took Athletic to two finals. The first was the Europa League final in Bucharest on 9 May 2012: Iturraspe played until half-time, when Bielsa took him off, and Atlético de Madrid won 3-0. A few weeks later the team also lost the Copa del Rey final to Barcelona. That same year he made one appearance for Spain's under-23 side.

Under Ernesto Valverde, 2013-14 was the season he established himself. Iturraspe anchored the midfield of a side that finished fourth in La Liga and returned to the Champions League after sixteen years, and he was named in the La Liga Team of the Season for 2013-14. By March 2015 he had played 153 top-flight games and more than 10,000 minutes. That year he played in another Copa del Rey final, again lost to Barcelona, and in August the club won the 2015 Spanish Super Cup, a trophy that appears on his record.

Spain national team

After his debut against Bolivia, Iturraspe was named in the 30-man provisional squad for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, but he was left out of the final list the next day. His second and last senior cap came on 4 September 2014 against France at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis: he replaced Sergio Busquets at half-time and played the whole second half. He finished his international career with two caps. He also played six times for the Basque Country team between 2011 and 2016.

Espanyol and retirement

He left Athletic in 2019 after eleven seasons in the first team, with 232 La Liga appearances, three goals and 320 competitive games in total. On 8 July 2019 he joined RCD Espanyol on a free transfer. He made his debut on 1 August that year in Europa League qualifying, coming on in the 65th minute as Espanyol won 3-1 away to Icelandic side Stjarnan. His first league game for the Barcelona club did not come until 15 December 2019, again as a substitute, in a 2-2 home draw with Real Betis.

He played 18 competitive games for Espanyol, eight of them in La Liga, in a 2019-20 campaign that ended in relegation to the Spanish second division. When his contract ran out he turned down offers from other clubs, and in September 2020 he announced his retirement, with 408 competitive appearances and five goals in his professional career.