David Moyes’ Real Sociedad memories: Beating Barcelona, free jamon and a football education

The Tickled Trout, a hotel just off Britain’s first-ever motorway, the M6, a short drive north of Manchester.

David Moyes has just finished his first interview since leaving the Manchester United job in April 2014 — “If I’d known I’d only have nine months, I would have done things differently,” was the main takeaway. Afterwards, as we were chatting informally, Moyes asked me: “What do you know about Real Sociedad?”.

The Glaswegian had been sounded out about the prospect of coaching the Basque side and was asking around for information. I knew about the city of San Sebastian, the stadium, the fan culture there and the historical context, but not the football in the detail required by Moyes.

I asked Manolo Marquez, a Catalan coach now in charge of India’s national team, for more detail on the players and systems they used and passed what he told me to Moyes. Two weeks later, he took the job.

Moyes was keen to make a good impression, and asked how to say ‘Hello’ in Basque.

The fact he had learned that word (‘Kaixo’) made front-page news in Spain after Moyes’ first press conference, an event that was attended by 100 journalists — which was news itself.

It was the start of Moyes’ year-long Spanish adventure and, with his two former clubs meeting in a Europa League decider at Old Trafford on Thursday night, now seems the right time to reflect on a period that the man who is now Everton manager for a second time ranks as one of the happiest periods of his career.

There was an irony in Moyes ending up in San Sebastian. Two years earlier, in 2013, after his United team had drawn 0-0 with Real Sociedad there in a Champions League group game, Moyes had spoken to the journalist Graham Hunter and me once he’d fulfilled his media duties. He told us of the huge task needed to turn United around as Alex Ferguson’s successor. I couldn’t see it — United were Premier League champions, after all — but he was right. Moyes also made a good impression on the Basques over those two matches.

Moyes and his assistant, Billy McKinlay, got stuck into the job. La Real were 19th in the 20-team table the month they arrived. The previous summer, they’d sold Antoine Griezmann to Atletico Madrid and goalkeeper Claudio Bravo to Barcelona, but talented players remained: defender Inigo Martinez (now at Barcelona), striker Imanol Agirretxe and goalkeeper Geronimo Rulli, together with Esteban Granero, Carlos Vela, Sergio Canales and Xabi Prieto.

“Xabi was the captain and a club legend,” Moyes tells The Athletic now. “Inigo Martinez was an up-and-coming centre back doing well.”

Moyes did well too, taking his new team up to 10th and losing only one of his first seven league games. Three months in, on January 5, 2015, they beat Barcelona, who would finish the season as treble winners, 1-0. He was helped by Lionel Messi starting that match on the bench, but it was still a notable result.

“I remember it clearly: we scored a quick goal and it felt like the longest 89 minutes of my career as we tried to keep Barcelona out,” Moyes says. “For months, the coaches were trying to work out how to beat Barcelona. We did it by defending for our lives and getting a goal when the opportunity came.

“It wasn’t the style I wanted to play, but I had to make us compact and hard to score against. It would have been naive if I’d put a player one v one against Messi, Luis Suarez or Neymar. Messi (who came on at half-time) could eliminate two or three players, never mind one. Xavi came up to me after the game and shook my hand. They lose well.”

Messi shakes Moyes’ hand after Real Sociedad beat Barcelona in 2015 (David Ramos/Getty Images)

San Sebastian is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and Moyes, while serious and intense in his work, loved the place. He would offer drinks to those journalists he trusted after games, showing the humorous side to his personality which isn’t always evident when he appears on television or the touchline.

He made his home at the Maria Cristina, San Sebastian’s finest belle-epoque era hotel — a far cry from The Tickled Trout — and after the reverse fixture against Barcelona at Camp Nout that May, a 2-0 defeat, he invited Hunter and me for drinks at the team hotel. The night ended with Moyes and McKinlay arguing like dogs over old skirmishes between Dundee and Dundee United and the Old Firm.

The lifestyle in Spain suited both men, not least the siesta in the afternoon which ensured no repeats of the “morning until night” working days in England, and the Basque scenery. “We’d drive into work at the training ground overlooking these stunning beaches and bays,” Moyes says. “I’d say to Billy, ‘Enjoy this because it won’t be like this forever’. It was a privilege.”

Moyes and McKinlay were close then, and still are. When Moyes returned to manage Everton again in January, almost 12 years after leaving for United, one of his moves was to rehire the 55-year-old, who’d also been on his staffs at Sunderland and West Ham, as his assistant.

“I’d offered Phil Neville the assistant job (at Real Sociedad) as he’d worked in Spain at Valencia, but he wanted some time out,” Moyes reveals. “Billy had all his badges and worked with good coaches like Martin Jol and Roy Hodgson (at Fulham), so I offered him the job.

“He’s been offered a couple of big jobs in the last couple of years but decided to stay with me and keep working. We get along well; he helps to build a good, respectful, inclusive team spirit, but he’d argue with anybody. We’d drive to a lot of games together, analysing our performances as we went.”

Moyes’s inaugural press conference at Real Sociedad (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

One of those drives — the 650km (400-mile) journey along Spain’s northern coast to La Coruna for a game against Deportivo — underlined Spain’s vast size. Another, the much shorter journey to Eibar, made Moyes and McKinlay feel very much at home.

“We saw a big Scottish lion that had been painted on the wall,” Moyes says, laughing. “Eibar reminded me of the Scottish Highlands, with the wind and rain.”

Both men embraced Spain’s football culture. There were regular trips to Bilbao, an hour’s drive away, to watch Athletic Club and on one occasion they took in a match between Real Madrid’s B team — then coached by Zinedine Zidane — at Real Union, in Irun near the French border. Zidane’s young team lost in front of 3,000 noisy locals.

For Moyes, these trips, and coming up against some of Spain’s lesser lights with La Real, helped bust some myths about football in that country.

“‘Tiki-taka’ only applied to one or two teams,” Moyes says. “Barcelona were incredible, but they didn’t talk about tiki-taka in Eibar, where the small stadium gave you the impression that you’re in for a hard-fought lower-league game.

“I loved every minute of being in Spain, I loved San Sebastian, I had a good feeling about the players. I was worried about what the Basque football culture would be like, but I found players who always wanted to train and who were committed. Real Sociedad had a great culture and maybe I should have understood that better: the importance of the academy, the infrastructure of the club. Maybe that’s why they often have coaches who are from Spain or the local area, because they’d know it better.

“I had something like 18 players from the academy and maybe six who’d been bought in. They wanted to continually put young players into the team, which I think is fabulous. But maybe I was sometimes reluctant, as I needed results. I also wondered if that was a hindrance because they were not competing for top players in the market.

Moyes managed Real Sociedad for a year from November 2014 (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

“But I gave Mikel Oyarzabal (the current captain) his debut. I was at the final of the Euros last year when he scored the winning goal for Spain (against England). I was proud for him – and not just because I’m a Scot!”

Not speaking the language was a criticism levelled at Moyes when results turned.

“I tried to learn Spanish and had private lessons, but I admit I found it difficult,” he says. “I had a year at it and I feel that if I’d had another year learning then I would have been OK speaking it.

“My wife and I love San Sebastian and talk about it all the time. We’d go out for dinner at night and the bar owners would give us free jamon or a glass of wine. The eating habits were better. There wasn’t as much sugar in the food; I saw only one fast-food outlet in San Sebastian. The street food was pintxos, fresh fish on bread for one euro each. It was superb.”

That said, Moyes’ diet wasn’t always healthy.

“I was sent off in one game and jumped over the fence to sit with fans a couple of rows up from the dugout. There was a young fan eating crisps. I fancied some and he shared them with me. It was a tense moment in the game, but when people noticed me eating the crisps, it lightened the mood.”

The second season, 2015-16, was more of a struggle and by the beginning of November La Real had only won twice.

“I felt that I was better at building teams over time and I didn’t really have that much time in Spain,” Moyes reflects. “We brought back midfielder Asier Illarramendi from Real Madrid for a club record fee, but we never got going. We had a pre-season in Scotland and Spain, and I thought we were well prepared, but we couldn’t get through a difficult spell. I felt like I’d brought the team up but then there had been a drop-off, which can happen.”

Moyes felt the pressure could be exacerbated by the immediacy of media duties following games.

“You had to do the post-match interviews very quickly after, like eight or 10 minutes. There was little cooling-off time like you get in the Premier League, so you’d do interviews high on emotion. You can present yourself much better and more clearly if you have a little more time, but the turnaround in Spain was tight.”

Moyes struggled for results in his second season in La Liga (Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)

Moyes and McKinlay lost their jobs on November 9, 2015, with a record of 12 wins, 15 draws and 15 defeats over 42 games. His initial bitterness has dissipated and he remains in touch with some of his old colleagues, including club president Jokin Aperribay. One of La Real’s club secretaries had his stag party in London and Moyes — then in charge of West Ham — went to meet him, having got the group tickets for a match where his team beat Arsenal.

There were some regrets, including his living arrangements at the Maria Cristina.

“I did that because I was on my own at the time, as my wife was back and forth (between the UK and Spain). I thought it made sense to stay in a hotel so that I could concentrate fully on the job, but I understand that staying in a hotel doesn’t send out an image that you are there for the long term.”

Real Sociedad have been a fixture in Spain’s top six for the past five seasons and while they are 11th this term, today’s last-16 second leg at Old Trafford offers the chance to claim a famous win following last Thursday’s 1-1 draw in the reverse fixture.

“I really admire how well Real Sociedad have done in recent years, getting into the Champions League and reaching the (2019-20) Copa del Rey final,” says Moyes. “I feel that (just as) Brighton and Brentford have found their way (in the Premier League), Real Sociedad too. It didn’t quite work out for me how I or the club would have hoped, but I’m grateful that they gave me the opportunity.”

Moyes, too, has flourished in recent years, leading West Ham to a first major trophy since 1980 by winning the UEFA Conference League in 2023 and reaching the quarter-finals of last season’s Europa League. Now he is back at Everton, whom he has led away from relegation danger with a superb run of form.

“There’s not many British managers who got good jobs in Europe, but I feel that I was one,” he adds. “I know that John Toshack had done well at Real Sociedad and Bobby Robson at Barcelona. I’m thankful that I had my chance to manage one of Spain’s proudest clubs.”

(Top photo: Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Images)