Gaizka Garitano is Basque. A fan of Bruce Springsteen, Liverpool and Jamie Carragher, who spent Boxing Day morning at Chelsea v West Ham and Boxing Day afternoon at Arsenal v QPR as a supporter, not a scout, but Basque. A man who doesn’t just have one Basque surname but eight of them, going back through the generations. Gaizka Garitano Aguirre Urkizu Asla Zubikarai Madariaga Garraminia Arteche was born in Euskadi, raised in Euskadi and played in Euskadi, for pretty much the whole of his career and for pretty much the whole of Euskadi: first Athletic Bilbao then Real Sociedad, Deportivo Alavés and Eibar. A member at Athletic, shareholder at Real, he’s manager at Eibar. Their most successful manager ever, in fact.

Garitano is 39 and has only been head coach for two and a half years, but he has taken his team to successive promotions and into the top division for the first time. Now he’s fighting to stay there, attempting to stretch the miracle over another season. Before that, he was a footballer for 16 seasons, 14 of them in Euskadi. Had he not been, he would have been a bertsolari, a Basque street poet. Football got in the way and anyway, he says, he may not have been good enough: those guys are geniuses, “the Messi and Ronaldo” of improvised verse. “Their use of language is incredible,” Garitano told World Soccer. As for his use of language, that became news this weekend. And the reaction to it was incredible too.

It was Sunday afternoon in Almería and Eibar had just lost 2-0, thanks to goals from Thievy Bifouma and Verza; a huge victory for Almería and a disastrous defeat for Eibar. What, journalists wondered, would the managers have to say about it? The answer, in Garitano’s case, was: not much. And what little he managed to say, they didn’t understand. Which was basically the problem. And it was not just the euskera they didn’t seem to understand.

Garitano eased into his seat in the press room at the Juegos Mediterráneos stadium, behind the bottles of beer and coke and energy drinks in electric blue, and the first question came in. A Basque TV channel, ETB, asked it, in Basque. A Basque manager of a Basque football team, who might not have had what it takes to become a bertsolari but who expresses himself well in Basque, whose first language is Basque and who speaks Basque at home, answered it. In Basque. Which, by the way, is one of four official languages of the Spanish state, according to article three of the constitution. Just as he has answered Basque questions with Basque answers in the 65 press conferences he had previously held this season without it ever being a problem; just as others had done before him; and just as the press officer had said he would.

This was how it would run and how it always runs: Garitano would answer Basque questions in Basque and then Spanish (castellano) questions in Spanish. They’d all get the chance to ask what they wanted and the chance to get the answer in the language they wanted. For two Almería-based journalists, though, it was not enough. And so it started. “Bai,” Garitano began – yes, in Basque. But soon his eyes were drawn to his right where someone was grumbling. He paused, staring ahead. Sitting alongside him, Almería’s press officer Juanjo Moreno spoke up, reiterating Garitano would respond to questions in castellano too, that bilingual press conferences were nothing new and bemoaning “a lack of respect” from the journalists. But it did no good.

“Sorry, míster. Go ahead ...” Moreno added and Garitano began again. This time the grumbling came from someone to his left and Garitano paused again.

“Is there are problem? Is there a problem?” he shot.

“Eh?”

“Is there a problem or something?” Garitano repeated.

“Yes, there’s a problem: we don’t understand a word.”

Again, Moreno intervened. “Look, señores,” he said, “we’ve been in the first division for six years and Barcelona have been here and there are questions in Catalan and questions in Spanish. I just don’t get what you’re complaining about.” As he was talking, Garitano got up and walked silently out the room. Moreno rose too, raised his arms in incredulity, shot a look at the journalists that said “you idiots” and headed after the Eibar coach. “This way, mister,” he called out, signalling the exit. It was all over.

Soon it was all over everywhere, an uncomfortable reminder of the way that linguistic debates are sometimes framed here, with the criticism for Garitano emerging from familiar sources. The immense majority supported Garitano and praised the reaction of Almería’s press officer in his defence, barely able to believe that in 2015 some journalists exhibit attitudes that echo another era. Others could believe it too well: there was something depressingly predictable in Garitano’s use of Euskera, as often happens with Catalan or Galego too, being interpreted by some as an implicit threat, as if it was a determined, deliberate and provocative political stance. ABC accused him of “insisting” on speaking Euskera even though “the majority of Almería journalists, like the majority of Basques, do not speak it.” Marca suggested he had “lacked sensitivity” and “common sense”.

Yet they had missed the point and if anyone lacked sensitivity it was the journalists who interrupted, demonstrating an attitude as aggressive as it was antiquated. Garitano has expressed his support for the idea of Basque independence before, he was not doing so here: there is little threat, little statement, in speaking Basque to a Basque TV channel after a football match, in replying to a question in the language in which it was asked.

Above all, the journalists’ complaints were very daft, showing not only a lack of respect towards Garitano but towards their colleagues too. They complained at not being able to do their job by preventing others doing their job. If the first grumble could be forgiven, put down to ignorance of the protocol to be followed, the second could not. It could be put down to ignorance, full stop. Garitano has a degree in journalism and, far from obstructing journalists’ work, he was facilitating it. Harmful? Helpful, more like. Until he walked, at least – and that decision is questionable of course. Surely a journalist can understand the value to another journalist of an answer in the language they can broadcast? The only obstructive people were those two journalists; when Garitano walked, they all went without.

They had been told that they would get their chance, in the language they chose; all they had to do was be patient. There was nothing preventing them from asking him to explain what he had said in Basque, to effectively be his own translator. It has happened before. At every press conference there are questions in Euskera and in castellano; there are more, much more, in the latter. At none of those press conferences have there been any limits applied, no quotas imposed. Almería’s press officer said it best: “I just don’t get what you’re complaining about.”

“They didn’t let me answer; I tried two or three times but they didn’t let me. And when that happens, you go,” Garitano explained later. His tone was conciliatory and a bit baffled. “Every week I answer questions in Euskera and there’s never been any problem. If I had refused to speak in Spanish, that would be different but I hadn’t and never would. That has never happened. If I am asked in Euskera, I reply in Euskera. If I’m asked in castellano, I reply in castellano. And if I’m asked in English, I try that too. It doesn’t matter. There’s no issue [there]; the issue is that we lost and we’re in a delicate position,” he concluded.

Eibar certainly are. This weekend, Levante overtook them into 15th place, pulling a point ahead. Defeat in Almería saw their opponents catch them too, leaving both teams on 31 points (although Eibar have a head to head advantage and Almería may still have three points deducted over their debt to Danish side Aalborg). On Monday, Eibar sit 16th, two points above the bottom three, and by next Monday they’re likely to be in the relegation zone: in midweek they face Sevilla and then at the weekend they play Valencia. There are five games to go and they are desperately hanging on.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Almeria’s midfielder Javier Espinosa, right, battles with Abraham Minero during Eibar’s 2-0 defeat on Sunday. Photograph: Carlos Barba/EPA

Hope comes from their final three fixtures after this week: Espanyol, Getafe and Córdoba, three sides with nothing to play for. Recent form, though, only deepens the pessimism. Eibar are where they expected to be. They may even be better off than they expected to be. The smallest team in the division, it is a miracle that they are here at all. To have reached week 33 with a two-point gap between them and a relegation zone that they have not yet entered is a huge success. At Christmas, they lost Raúl Albentosa to Derby County, the Championship club that could offer him a salary six times what he was on at Eibar. “We tried to convince him to wait until the end of the season at least but they said ‘now or never’ and he deserved the move,” Garitano said.

At that point, few foresaw this collapse. At the half-way stage, when everyone had played everyone once, Eibar were eighth. They were the Basque country’s best team. Garitano warned the problem may come when they saw themselves as a first division team and at that point they did. “It’s not shameful or problematic to feel inferior,” he said. “I don’t think that’s anything to hide from. It’s good to know what you’re up against. The day that you play de tu a tu, as equals, you lose something. We can’t forget where we come from; the day we forget that, we’ll have a problem.”

Since then Athletic Bilbao have surpassed them and so have Real Sociedad. Seven others have done the same, Levante the latest of them, and the fear now is two more will do so too. As the Diario Vasco put it, they’re heading “downhill and the brakes don’t work.” In week 19, Eibar had won seven, drawn six and lost six. Since then, they have won once. They have lost 12 of 14 games since the halfway stage, picking up four of 42 points and scoring just four times.

It is hard to explain what has happened. Maybe Eibar have just reached their natural level; survival, which should have been impossible, is still possible. Maybe they allowed themselves to believe, like everyone else did, that it was all over. Maybe ill-fortune, individual mistakes – there have been plenty of them – and refereeing decisions have as well. Maybe their confidence has gone. Maybe it is a mix of all those things. Maybe. Maybe someone should ask their manager. And maybe this time they’ll let him finish.

Talking points

• For about an hour Celta v Real Madrid was superb: chaotic, open, and very fast. 1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2 it went ... all in the first 27 minutes. James Rodríguez made it 2-3 just before half-time and then there was a penalty shout for Celta to make it 3-3. Instead, Javier Hernández scored a brilliant second – he’s running at better than a goal a game now – to make it 4-2 with 20 minutes to go. And there it ended. Until then, there had been chances at both ends and huge wide open spaces, Celta racing round the pitch, Madrid racing after them and into the gaps they had left behind. There were 29 shots and Berizzo said he was happy that his team had been so “faithful” to the way they play. Nolito in particular was superb, driving Madrid mad from the left. He wasn’t bad off the pitch either. Asked about the penalty claim, he said: “talking about referees is like asking the lemon tree for cup cakes.”

• As one genius put it: “rubbish derby: no away fans, no home team.” That might be an exaggeration but there was something a bit flat about Espanyol v Barcelona, thanks largely to the fact Luis Enrique’s side were just too good. 2-0 up at half-time thanks to two brilliant goals (albeit Luis Suárez was offside when he provided the pass for the second), Barcelona overcame the last of their opponents in this recent run of tough games, dubbed The Tourmalet by some: Celta, (Almería), Sevilla, Valencia, Espanyol. They had dropped points just once: in Seville. That day they “lost half a title,” the headlines said. This time they had won it back again. This win was “half a title,” Mundo Deportivo said. Real Madrid now embark on the same run, although their performance in Vigo, where Barcelona were fortunate to win 1-0, shows that they are certainly not about to give up. There are still just two points in it.

• Where have all the goals gone? Villarreal, the team who went 16 league games scoring for fun have now scored once in their last seven.

• Antoine Griezmann: c’est fantastique. Or something. His 22 league goals for Atlético are more than any Frenchman has ever scored in La Liga before ... and would make him top scorer in any league other than Spain.

• “Sevilla sleep in the Champions League,” as one headline had it. Valencia can take that place off them tonight though.

Results

Córdoba 0-1 Athletic Bilbao

Espanyol 0-2 Barcelona

Atlético 3-0 Elche

Getafe 0-1 Levante

Real Sociedad 0-0 Villarreal

Málaga 1-1 Deportivo de La Coruña

Almería 2-0 Eibar

Sevilla 2-0 Rayo Vallecano

Celta Vigo 2-4 Real Madrid

Tonight: Valencia v Granada