Since 1911, the Spanish football club Athletic Bilbao has had an unwritten rule whereby the club will only sign players who were born or raised in the Basque Country or who learned their football skills at a Basque club. On occasion, youth players have also been invited to join due to ancestral links to the region, but no senior players have been signed based on Basque heritage alone.
The policy is related to Basque nationalism and has been praised as a way to promote local talent, although it has been criticised as being discriminatory.
With regards to coaching staff, including managerial positions, those roles are eligible for non-Basques, both from other regions in Spain and elsewhere in the world.
History In the first decade of their existence, Athletic selected English players for the team but since 1911, they have adhered to a policy of allowing only players born in the Basque Country or who learned their football skills at a Basque club to play for them. The rhyming motto used to describe the reasoning behind it is (English: "with home-grown talent and local support, there's no need for imports").
In 1911, a dispute occurred between Athletic Bilbao and fellow Basque club Real Sociedad regarding the former fielding ineligible English players in the 1911 Copa del Rey; they had also employed the services of several (non-Basque) players from Atlético Madrid which was then a branch of the Bilbao club. The dispute led to the Royal Spanish Football Federation introducing a rule for the next year's competition that all players must be Spanish citizens. As a large proportion of the best players in that early era were Basque, relying on locals was no impediment to Athletic and they chose to maintain that approach even when the regulations were relaxed some years later. English forward Andrew Veitch (who was not part of the 1911 protest as he had already played for the club in the previous year's competition) played and scored in the final and is known as the last foreigner to make a competitive appearance for Athletic outside the boundaries of their own criteria.The true identity of Athletic Bilbao’s last Englishman is finally unearthed, Lartaun de Azumendi on Twitter via Jonathan Carr, Anglo Premier Translations. 27 May 2020
The policy is not written into the Athletic Bilbao rulebook but specific criteria were added to the club's upgraded website in 2008;Home page [no specific mention of signing policy] Athletic Bilbao (official website, archived version), (in Spanish), 25 September 2008Club [signing policy included] Athletic Bilbao (official website, archived version), (in Spanish), 2 November 2008 the approach has become a philosophy of the club in order to promote local players under the (homegrown) system.Athletic Club: a way of life, Athletic Bilbao, 27 January 2021 The policy also extends to Athletic's reserves, their farm team CD Basconia, their youth teams and their women's football department. It does not apply to the coaching staff, with managers from England, Hungary, Germany, France and Argentina among those to have led the team at various times.
They were not the only club to adhere to this approach; Real Sociedad had a similar policy from 1962 (when they were relegated and chose to rebuild their squad using their reserves, which had limited impact in the short term but eventually led to the club winning two consecutive league titles in the early 1980s – as Athletic also did – while adhering to the self-imposed restriction) but it was dropped for foreign imports in 1989 when they signed the Republic of Ireland forward John Aldridge, soon followed by their first black player Dalian Atkinson,Goals, class, a red Ferrari: Aldridge, Richardson and Atkinson at la Real, Sid Lowe, The Guardian, 25 February 2021 and they made their first non-Basque Spanish signing in 2002 with the transfer of Boris from Real Oviedo. However, the San Sebastián-based club still places a high importance on producing their own local players, and a high percentage of their squad in the 2010s were home-grown.Athletic Bilbao v Real Sociedad: How La Real's trust in youth is paying off, Alex Bysouth, BBC Sport, 29 December 2020
The policy has been praised as a symbol of localised football being successful at the highest level, as well as preserving a strong regional identity and being a way for Basque nationalism to be moderately expressed. It has been described as discriminatory for only allowing Basque players to play for Athletic Bilbao, although it has been suggested that the policy is working for them since Athletic is one of only three clubs (along with Real Madrid and Barcelona) never to have been relegated from La Liga.
Origins of players Ethnic minorities
Due to a relatively low immigrant population in the region, the policy also had the consequence of Athletic Bilbao having been the last club in La Liga to field a black player. That player was Jonás Ramalho, whose father is Angolan, who made his debut in 2011.Jonas Ramalho helping to dispel longstanding Athletic Bilbao myth; Sports Illustrated, 23 November 2011 In 2015, Iñaki Williams (Born in Bilbao to Ghanaian immigrant parents, who reached Spain by crossing the Sahara on barefoot and jumping the Melilla border fence), became Athletic's first black goalscorer.Inaki Williams becomes first black Athletic Bilbao goalscorer in 117-year history; Sky Sports, 20 February 2015 A decade later, Williams was named club captain after making over 400 appearances.Athletic captain Iñaki Williams aims to 'break down barriers', Adriana García, ESPN, 29 July 2025 Prior to Ramalho, in 2000 the first African-born player in the club's youth system was Blanchard Moussayou whose promising career was curtailed by injury; some years later, he stated his belief that it was 'twice as hard' for a black player to make an impact at the club. Gorka Luariz, a forward of mixed ethnicity capped by Equatorial Guinea in 2018, spent time in Athletic's youth system despite being born in Zaragoza as his upbringing was almost entirely in the Basque region. Another international player, Yaser Hamed, born in Biscay to a Palestinian father, spent five years with the club as a child before moving around several local semi-professional teams and clubs in Bahrain, Egypt and Qatar.Yaser Hamed, Athletic BilbaoJuega en Tercera División y ya es internacional con Palestina: la historia de Yaser Hamed [He plays in the Third Division and is now an international with Palestine: the story of Yaser Hamed], Diario AS (in Spanish) 6 June 2019
Former academy trainee Yuri Berchiche, who rejoined Athletic in the summer of 2018 as one of the club's most expensive signings, has an Algerian father but showed no interest in playing for their national team when the matter was put to him. By coincidence, Berchiche's hometown Zarautz, west of San Sebastián, is also that of Álex Padilla, a goalkeeper of partial Mexican heritage and upbringing who had already played for that nation at under-23 level before he made his first team debut in 2024.
As of 2019, Athletic's academy teams included a small number of players of an ethnic minority (mostly Afro-Spaniard) background, including Cameroon-born pair Christophe Atangana (a goalkeeper), and defender Loic Boum who was orphaned as a child and was a ward of the Government of Navarre when he joined the club in 2014 plus forward Nico Williams, the younger brother of Iñaki, who made his first-team debut in 2021 and soon developed into a player of international quality, subsequently winning the UEFA European Championship with Spain in 2024. In 2021, the older youth teams featured a Colombia-born goalkeeper and a handful of others who had mostly been at the club for several years. Winger Malcom Adu Ares, from Bilbao with Bissau-Guinean heritage, made his debut aged 20 in 2022, but he only joined the club a year earlier and had not been part of the setup as a teenager.
By 2024, the reserve teams contained several promising players of partial or full African origin including Adama Boiro, Junior Bita, Igor Oyono and Elijah Gift, while new signing Álvaro Djaló was in the main squad – cousin of Adu Ares, the winger joined for an initial €15 million fee (one of the club's biggest transfer outlays) from SC Braga of Portugal, having developed there and with no immediately obvious Basque links due to being born in Madrid and of West African heritage; however, most of his childhood was spent in Bilbao. Djaló and Boiro appeared for the first team several times that season before the club signed Maroan Sannadi, a forward of Moroccan origin born and raised in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Quickly pressed into elite action at club level for the first time in his career, Sannadi made his debut for Morocco in June 2025, becoming the first Athletic player to represent any North African or Arab nation as a full international.Maroan Sannadi: The First Moroccan to Break Athletic Bilbao’s Century-Old Tradition, Bewildered in Morocco, 13 June 2025 Six months later, half-Brazilian midfielder Selton Sánchez made his first-team debut aged 18.
French players The club has also recruited players from the French Northern Basque Country (a region of 300,000 where rugby union is the most popular sport) with Bixente Lizarazu being the first French-Basque to play for the senior team in 1996.
The signing of Aymeric Laporte prompted debate among supporters and columnists regarding the definitions of the policy when he became the first Frenchman to successfully graduate from the club's youth system in 2012, as he had no link to the Basque region through birth or residency, and a blood link only via great-grandparents. He did play for a team in the territory, Aviron Bayonnais, but only by arrangement after the initial approach from Athletic in 2009, as he was too young to move to a club outside France at the time – he arrived formally in 2010.
Yanis Rahmani, a Frenchman of Algerian origin raised in Sestao, progressed as far as Basconia at the same time as Laporte but did not turn professional with the club. Others have progressed no further than youth level. In 2024, Johaneko Louis-Jean (a Bayonne native of Afro-Caribbean descent) joined the club following the financial collapse of his previous team Bordeaux; He made his senior debut in 2026.
Griezmann debate Antoine Griezmann, the French forward developed by Real Sociedad, was the subject of debate regarding his eligibility for a theoretical move to Athletic as he emerged as an elite player in 2012. Hailing from Burgundy, he arrived at the San Sebastián club aged 14 but only to play football for their academy teams rather than for some other non-sporting reason, and has no connection to the French Basque Country other than attending school there after signing for Real.
The opinions of some (including Athletic's academy director José María Amorrortu) were that his training at a Basque club from a young age adhered to the policy, while others insisted that he had the same (ineligible) status as any adult player transferred in by Real and the other local professional clubs. In any event, Griezmann showed little interest in joining Athletic, subsequently moved on to Atlético Madrid and was voted the world's third best player in 2016, making any move to Bilbao unlikely in the medium term. The debate resurfaced again briefly in 2022 when a nominee for the Athletic presidency mentioned the Frenchman (who by now had joined FC Barcelona then returned to Atlético) as a potential target should his candidacy be successful.¿Podría jugar Griezmann en el Athletic según su política de fichajes? [Could Griezmann play for Athletic Bilbao according to their transfer policy?], Alfonso Herrán, Diario AS, 17 June 2022 (in Spanish). Retrieved 26 March 2026