Time for Athletic to move up a class

Athletic Bilbao’s current crop of Basque players proved in Manchester on Thursday night that it is ready to take a step forward, and turn quality into glory and, perhaps, a little silverware. The 2-3 win at United’s Old Trafford stadium in the Europa League — a competition that also saw a mediocre Ajax of Amsterdam win at the English club’s so-called fortress last month — was well deserved and ought to be enough to see Athletic into the quarterfinals of Europe’s second-tier competition after next week’s home leg.

Besides the Europa League, Bilbao also has a domestic date with Barcelona in the King’s Cup final, to be played on May 25 at Atlético Madrid’s Vicente Calderón stadium.

But what coach Marcelo Bielsa must surely focus on now is guiding his talented and youthful squad into the European elite of Champions League soccer, with the fourth and final qualification berth going begging as a group of inconsistent teams mill around the upper-middle reaches below the over-achieving Levante. Even third-place Valencia has shown it is vulnerable of late, and on Thursday its tired-looking defense partly frittered away a commanding lead in the Europa League first leg against PSV Eindhoven, the Dutch team grabbing two late away goals in a 4-2 defeat.

Athletic can start on the right road by mounting a successful raid on Osasuna’s Reyno de Navarra on Sunday night (9.30pm, Canal+). But the Basque-Navarrese derby always stirs up a fine atmosphere and the proud Pamplona club has only lost twice at its ancestral seat this season, with Barcelona one of Osasuna’s more recent visiting victims.

Málaga meanwhile will be gunning directly for fourth spot when hosting Levante on Saturday (&pm, Canal+ Liga2 PPV), while the winner of Espanyol-Rayo Vallecano will do its chances no harm in terms of European qualification. Atlético Madrid will hope to follow up its Europa League home win over Besiktas (3-1) with a three-point performance against Granada on Sunday (12pm, C+Liga/GolTV), a team that has lost nine times on the road this season.

Real Madrid visits Real Betis on Saturday night (10pm, La Sexta) hoping to keep up its 10-point buffer ahead of Barcelona, which plays at Racing the following day (6pm, C+Liga/GolTV).