Bielsa remote Croatian village

The Koprivnica area, home to the team Athletic Bilbao will meet to qualify for the Europa league group phase, is tiny, with a population barely breaching the 30,000 mark. But the town where Athletic will be staying for its game against Slaven is even smaller.

The team from Bilbao will escape the hustle and bustle, something that Marcelo Bielsa will enjoy, to Durdevac, a town in the centre of Croatia with a population of less than 7,000. They will stay at a touristic sports complex that is often used by Croatian teams for training sessions or during preparation for their league campaigns.

Durdevac is in the middle of nowhere, some 25 kilometres from Koprivnica and more than 100 kilometres from Zagreb, where the travelling fans will stay. The team's home for the coming days will be Hotel Picok, an establishment that has been awarded three stars but that has a football pitch, several playing fields and a covered sports pavilion, as well as a gym, a pool and enough open land to train for any sport.

Athletic's qualifier will be played in Koprivnica's small Gradski stadium, which has little over 3,000 seats. This game will be a real occasion for Koprivnica.