Unai Simon wants more

“When I first got the call, I remember Patosi Ferreira, who was second at Gaizka Garitano at the time, and he joked about what he saw on the screen of the Athletic players in the San Mamés box. With the trust of both Luis Enrique and de la Fuente, little by little, game by game, we succeeded in adding these 54 international players and continued to add one more to see if we could add all possible players.

Last Wednesday, Unai Simon became the most capped player for Spain in Athletic’s 100-year history. Alaba’s goalkeeper surpassed the record set a few years ago by Joseba Echeverría, who played 53 games for La Roja. The 28-year-old red-and-white goalkeeper has a long way to go if he continues to get more appearances.

His senior international debut took place on 11 November 2020. That night, La Roja drew 1-1 with the Netherlands. Since then, including that first match, Unai Simon has won 33 times against the Spanish national team, drawn 17 times and lost just four times. He managed to keep a clean sheet in 24 of the 54 games he played against La Roja.

Their clean sheet record coincides with the last competitive period for de la Fuente’s side. Athletic’s goalkeeper has kept a clean sheet in four matches (Bulgaria 0-3, Turkiye 0-6, Georgia 2-0, Bulgaria 4-0). In this way, Unai Simon managed to extend his previous streak of three consecutive games by keeping a clean sheet. This record dates back to the games against Greece (6-0), Sweden (1-0) and Iceland (5-0) in 2021-22, and the games against Cyprus (6-0), Scotland (2-0) and Norway (0-1) in 2023-24.

Return to origin

Once this new involvement at national team level is completed, Alaba’s goalkeeper will return to Lezama for the third season of the season during the international break with Athletic. Unai Simon also returns to the scene having rushed to Bilbao to make his debut as goalkeeper for the Bilbao team. This story is well known. During that campaign, Kepa paid 80 million yen to move to Chelsea, Remiro refused to renew as a Lion because he was already set to move to Real for the next campaign, and Iago Herrerin was injured.

The goalkeeper from Murgia was offered a contract by Elche on loan from Athletic on 27 July 2018, but on 15 August he canceled his contract with the Elche club and returned to Lezama as goalkeeper in Bilbao’s first team. Five days later, he made his official debut as a Lion in a league match against Leganes in San Mamés. Since then, he has played 228 official games in the red and white jacket, which was handed out to him over eight seasons.

Unai Simón is the only member of Valverde’s current team to have completed all 10 games for the red-white team so far this season.