Team Focus: Athletic Bilbao

Yesterday, Athletic Bilbao lost 3-1 to Barcelona. No surprise there as recent times have seen a rise in the fortunes of the Catalan club and relative mediocrity for the team from the Basque country. But watching Bilbao reminded me of how fascinating they are as a team. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the club from Bilbao.

Here are some of the most interesting highlights:

• Athletic Bilbao have been one of the most successful clubs in Spanish history. They have won the Spanish league title 8 times (most recently in 1983-84). Perhaps even more impressive, they have never been relegated from the top division.
• Bilbao are seen as a symbol of the Basque country. Their role in Basque identity is extremely important (indeed, Basque flags appeared to outnumber those of Athletic Bilbao in the stands of yesterday’s game). Fans of the club celebrate the success of the team as if it were a Basque national team (an entity that does exist, but which FIFA has refused to recognize).
• The importance of the club to Basque identity can be seen nowhere more powerfully than in their policy of only playing Basque players. To this day, Athletic have a team comprised fully of players who are ethnically Basque (or, in some cases, born in the region).
• This policy of only employing Basque players is seen by some as overly exclusive and impossible to maintain in this era of globalization in which Athletic’s opponents are buying the best players from all over the world. Many fans cite the case of the club’s refusal to buy the half-Basuqe, half-Equitorial Guinean Benjamin as an example of the overly exclusivist.
• Interestingly, while the club only has Basque players, they have not been shy about hiring non-Basque managers. Recent foreigners in charge of the team include Josef “Jupp” Heynckes, Luis Fernandez, and Howard Kendall. It is also of note that the club was founded by British sailors and only in the early years of its existence did it develop its policy of Basque exclusivity.
  
• A poll in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in the mid-1990s found that 76% of the team’s fans would rather their club be relegated than give up their policy of having exclusively Basque players. Currently sitting in the relegation zone, this valuing of identity over success may be put to the test.
• The most colorfully named award in all of Europe, the pichichi, given to the top goal-scorer in Spain’s La Liga, is named after an early Athletic player who went by that name (but whose given name was Rafael Moreno Aranzadi).
• Athletic Bilbao play in one of the most famous stadiums in Spain, the San Mames, known by its nickname “The Cathedral.” According to Wikipedia, this moniker comes from the fact that “their stadium was built near a church called San Mamés. Mamés was an early Christian thrown to the lions by the Romans. The lions refused to eat Mames and he was later made a saint.”
• Athletic Bilbao may refuse to employ non-Basque players, but they are one of the few clubs (are there others? I’m not sure) in Spain with a female president. The game against Barcelona was the first for new head honcho Ana Urkijo.
• With Barcelona now sporting UNICEF logos on their jerseys, Bilbao are one of the increasingly few clubs without sponsorship on their uniforms. Last year, the management of the club did get approval to seek a jersey sponsor, but as of yet none has been found which would prove significantly lucrative enough to tarnish the red and white stripes which are a symbol of Basque nationalism.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Europe, Team Focus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.