Xabi Alonso, David Silva and 'the most important moment in the history of Basque football': Ahead of historic Copa del Rey final against Bilbao, Sociedad chief tells all on his …

A remarkable thing happened in Spanish football 12 months ago – in an age when fans seem to count for less and less Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao agreed to indefinitely postpone the Spanish Cup final they were due to contest until supporters were allowed back in to stadiums.

For on-form Real Sociedad it meant missing out on a great chance to put one over on their local rivals. For Athletic Club they were waving goodbye to their best chance of making it into Europe. But both decided that they would take a stand for the fans.

‘There is a ferocious rivalry between the clubs but we are also capable of looking at things from the same perspective and we both wanted our fans to be inside the stadium to watch the game,’ says Real Sociedad’s sporting director Roberto Olabe.

Real Sociedad against Athletic Bilbao remains one of Spanish football’s greatest derby games

The clubs postponed the  Copa del Rey final last year as fans were unable to attend but given the match has to be played before the final of the 2021 edition, it will now be held behind closed doors at La Cartuja in Seville on Saturday

Sadly a year later it turns out the fabulous gesture has not saved what would have been a magical day for both sets of supporters.

‘I don’t think anyone imagined the brutal impact the pandemic was going to have,’ Olabe says. ‘We know we have to play last year’s final before this year’s. There’s no choice.’

Olabe believes the clubs would have happily gone on waiting ‘as long as it takes’ were it not for the fact that the 2021 final, between Athletic and Barcelona, is due to be played on April 17.

Time marches on and yet these two Basque rivals, meeting together in Saturday’s Spanish Cup final for the first time ever, are throwbacks to an era when sport was still more a game than a business.

It’s Athletic who have the unique Basque-only player policy – Real abandoned it in 1989 with John Aldridge their first ever foreign player – but they are also bucking the trend to always look for solutions in the marketplace.

This season they started the campaign with 16 players in the first-team squad who had come through the club’s youth academy. Favourite son Xabi Alonso coaches the Real Sociedad B-team ‘Sanse‘. And the club’s very special identity helped them land David Silva.

‘We have the Sanse team with an average age of about 20 and on average those players have been at the club for seven years or so,’ says Olabe.

‘That speaks volumes for the stability here. We have a responsibility to fight for the potential of our young players.’

The man coaching the players on their last stop before they make the first team is someone who everyone at Real Sociedad hopes will coach the senior side one day.

It has been a long wait for Real Sociedad but they are now ready for a match they believe is the biggest game in the history of Basque football, with regional pride on the line against Athletic

A key part of the club ethos is flooding the first team with academy products, and that rests on the shoulders of Xabi Alonso (pictured) as he commits to managing the ‘Sanse‘ B squad

Olabe is speaking to Sportsmail on the day it’s announced that, despite considering the possibility of starting a new challenge with Borussia Monchengladbach, Alonso will stay in charge at Sociedad for another year.

Wouldn’t it be a shame if the club were to miss out on his best years as a coach as they did as a player when he joined Liverpool in 2004?

‘We had good years from Xabi the player!’ says Olabe. ‘It was short but we were able to enjoy him for three seasons.

‘He’s an intelligent guy. I don’t know when, I don’t know if I’ll [still] be here, but I think Xabi will one day coach Real Sociedad.’

It’s put to him that he could leave first and then come back to take the reins. ‘Right now he is fulfilling a role that the club needs and he is doing it extraordinarily well,’ Olabe says. ‘And maybe as you say, it could be an “out and then in again” situation. I don’t know.

‘He’s ambitious and I want ambitious people here. I want people who want to improve and aspire to better themselves.’

Throughout the chat Olabe is at pains to point out that ‘La Real’ don’t want to just be all sizzle and not steak. They want to compete and win things, not just produce great young players who go elsewhere.

It remains a grand and passionate occasion and there is overwhelming disappointment that the first ever all-Basque final must be held behind closed doors due to the ongoing pandemic

They made a major statement in that direction at the start of last season with the loan signing from Real Madrid of Martin Odegaard and then last summer with the acquisition of Silva.

‘The No 10 position is very important in our style of play,’ he says. ‘It was a time when we wanted our way of playing to become a bit more aggressive. We wanted to still be a passing team but we wanted to start exploiting space.

‘We wanted a player who could play in tight spaces but who was also able to make us a little bit more direct stretching teams not just with runs in behind but with passes.

‘And so that is why Martin arrived on a two-season loan. But [after one season] because of these things that happen in football ‘Martintxo’ [his Basque nickname] had to leave us.’

Real Sociedad consciously looked for an experienced replacement, he says. ‘Last season there were times when we had a team with an average age of less than…