Athletic Bilbao is a Spanish football club from Bilbao, Biscay in the Basque Country.

In addition to winning several national league titles and domestic cups since their formation at the start of the 20th century, the club is perhaps best known for their policy of only signing players who have a link to their home territory, and for being one of only three clubs to have participated in every league season without being relegated, despite the restrictions of the policy.

Background

Football was introduced to Bilbao by two distinct groups of players, both with British connections: British steel and shipyard workers and Basque students returning from schools in Britain.

In the late 19th century, Bilbao was a leading port in an important industrial area with iron mines and shipyards nearby, such as the Nervión Shipyards, located in Sestao (Vizcaya). In 1889, its British employees formed a multi-sports entity called Club Atleta, who played the first known football match in Bilbao on 4 April 1890 in a game between the club's members, and soon, they began to play against crews of English ships carrying miners from Southampton, Portsmouth and Sunderland. Along with the coal, the British miners and shipyard workers brought with them (as in so many other parts of the world) football. These first matches were held on a field known as La Campa de los Ingleses, but it was at the Campo de Lamiako where football took off in Bilbao, with several Bilbainos swarming the field to watch the teams of British workers challenge each other every weekend, and The local population also began to play the sport.

Meanwhile, sons of the Basque educated classes had made the opposite journey and went to Britain to complete their studies in civil engineering and commerce. While in the United Kingdom, these students developed an interest in football, and on their return to Bilbao, they began to arrange football games at Lamiako, with an early example of this coming in the spring of 1894, when some Bilbaínos faced an eleven of English residents in Bilbao in the morning of 3 May, ending in a 5–0 victory for the British. The result did not discourage the local population, who continued their newfound love affair with the British sport, began taking root in the city, and soon it gained followers among members belonging to the Gimnásio Zamacois, among whom a certain Juan Astorquia stood out.

Origins In 1898, Juan Astorquia, together with six fellow Basque football enthusiasts and Lamiako usuals who also belonged to the Gimnásio Zamacois (some of whom had recently returned from Britain), decided to open a football practice center in Lamiako. The seven were Juan Astorquia, Alejandro Acha, Fernando and Pedro Iraolagoitia, Enrique Goiri, Eduardo Montejo and Luis Márquez, and this group would later become Athletic Bilbao. Gimnásio Zamacois, the largest sports center in Bilbao at that time, and the Velocipedista Club, where Astorquia maintained friendships due to his militancy as a member, inevitably became the main sources of recruitment, and thus, once he added a sufficient number of volunteers, he began to arrange and organize matches of the game they loved against the British workers, which were contested on Sundays in Lamiako. This group of football pioneers led by Astorquia, who wore a white and blue shirt divided into two halves with dark blue pants and whose training sessions were held in Getxo's Campa de Santa Eugenia, was almost entirely made of players from Biscay, with a mix of newcomers from the world of cycling.

Two years later, on 30 November 1900, Carlos Castellanos and his brother Manuel, together with a group of young Bilbainos from the upper class who had studied in England and learned about football there, founded the Bilbao Football Club in the Biscayan neighborhood of Algorta. The new Bilbao FC was officially established shortly after its foundation since its regulations were approved by the civil governor and printed in 1901. A few months later, in February 1901, at a meeting held at the Café García, that group of football pioneers in Lamiako, now larger, and probably encouraged by the first news about the founding of Bilbao FC, began conversations to officially establish a football club, so a commission was formed (made up of Goiri, Astorquia, and José María Barquín) with the intention of preparing regulations for a football society, and this regulation was approved on 11 June. The entity's Board was then elected, with Luis Márquez being appointed the first president of the club, Barquín as treasurer and Goiri as its secretary, while Astorquia and Alfred Mills were named the team's captain and vice-captain. The most logical name for a new football club founded in Bilbao (Bilbao Football Club) was already "taken", so the name they chose was Athletic Club, using the English spelling. The name is an apparent homage to the Club Atleta of the Nervión Shipyards (1889–94), and it might have been Mills who proposed it since he played against Club Atleta.

After obtaining the permission of the Civil Government, the Club was officially established on 5 September 1901, in the infamous meeting held at Café García, in which the 33 members decided to make it official and register as a sports organization with the local council. Among those 33 men were the 7 original founders, Juan Astorquia's brother, Luis, Alejandro Acha and Luis Silva, who started playing football in the French town of Bayonne, Goiri and Barquín, former students from St Joseph's College, Dumfries, Alejandro de la Sota, a footballer who started at Plymouth, Gregorio Eguren, who had played in Manchester and later the Portuguese Perico Larrañaga, who trained as a footballer in Newcastle upon Tyne, as well as Alfred Edward Mills, who was the only foreign-born person among the 33 who signed the documents.

In 1902, Juan Astorquia became the club's second president, taking over from Luis Márquez. The club's foundation date is a subject of debate among football historians. The club itself declares 1898, but others claim 1901 as the true founding year due to Athletic's first board meeting held in the Café García, and others claim 1903, when Athletic merged with Bilbao Football Club, with the side that emerged from the unification being called Athletic Club de Bilbao.

Club Bizcaya

At the end of 1901, the two most important clubs in the city were Athletic Club and Bilbao FC, and thus, a rivalry soon arose between them, playing several friendlies at the Hippodrome of Lamiako, which the two teams shared since there were hardly any fields in Bilbao. Their duels aroused great expectation and served as one of the drivers of football as a mass phenomenon in Bilbao. Despite the sporting rivalry between them, they had good relations, and thus, the two rivals agreed to join the best players of each club to play two games against the Bordeaux-based side Burdigala. This temporary merge became known as Club Bizcaya (with a B), and they beat Burdigala 2–0 in France, the first time a Bilbao team played on foreign territory, and 7–0 in Lamiako, the very first visit by a foreign team to Bilbao, gathering a crowd of three thousand spectators, a tremendous amount at the time.

In 1902, Club Bizcaya participated in the 1902 Copa de la Coronación, the forerunner to the Copa del Rey. They returned with the trophy after defeating FC Barcelona 2–1 in the final with goals from the captain Juan Astorquia and French Armand Cazeaux, both of Athletic. Juan Astorquia used Bizcaya FC's successful campaign to convince Luis Arana of how necessary it was to merge the two clubs. Furthermore, the owners of Bilbao FC began to lose interest in their team, which at the end of 1902 was going through a certain institutional crisis, and so, on 24 March 1903, Bilbao FC and its associates were officially and definitively absorbed by Athletic Club. In the same year, Basque students also formed an affiliated team, Athletic Club Madrid, after watching the team triumph in the 1903 Copa del Rey Final; this club later evolved into Atlético Madrid.

Copa del Rey

The club featured prominently in early Copa del Rey competitions. Following the inaugural win by Club Bizcaya, the newly formed Athletic Bilbao won it again in 1903, winning the final with a comeback 3–2 win over Madrid FC, the Athletic goalscorers being Armand Cazeaux, Eduardo Montejo and Alejandro de la Sota. In 1904, they were declared winners after their opponents, Club Español de Madrid, failed to turn up. In 1907, they revived the name Club Bizcaya for the 1907 Copa del Rey. After a brief lull, they won the competition again in 1911 after beating CD Español 3–1. The first time that Athletic wears red and white was on 9 January 1910 in a match against Sporting de Irún.

In 1911, former player and team captain Alejandro de la Sota, the match winner of the first Copa del Rey in 1903, was elected as the 7th president of the club, and under his leadership, Athletic Club achieved its greatest economic and sporting successes, getting the funds for the construction of the San Mamés Stadium, which opened in 1913, becoming one of the symbols of Athletic's dominance on the national level in the 1910s, winning the Copa del Rey three times in a row between 1914 and 1916. The star of this team was Pichichi, a prolific goalscorer who scored the very first goal in the San Mamés stadium on 21 August 1913 and a hat-trick in the 1915 final, before dying aged just 29 in 1922. Today, the La Liga top-scorer is declared the Pichichi in his honour. After a five-year hiatus, they won it again in 1921 with a 4–1 victory over Athletic Madrid, courtesy of two braces from José María Laca and Domingo Acedo.

The first La Liga

In 1920, when Spain made their international debut at the 1920 Summer Olympics, Athletic provided the squad with three players: José María Belauste, Domingo Acedo and Pichichi, the former two scoring the two goals of a 2-1 win over Sweden and the latter scoring in the Silver/Bronze medal match which Spain won 3–1 over the Netherlands on 5 September 1920. Athletic were not the only Basque team represented in the 1920 squad. Other clubs such as Real Unión, Arenas Club de Getxo and Real Sociedad also provided players. These four clubs were all founding members of La Liga in 1928 and by 1930 they were joined by CD Alavés. This meant that five of the ten clubs in the Primera División of Spain's national league were from the Basque Country. The saying "Con cantera y afición, no hace falta importación", translated as "With home-grown teams and supporters, there is no need for imports", made sense during these early days.

The Fred Pentland era

In 1921, a new British coach, Fred Pentland, arrived from Racing de Santander. In 1923, he led the club to victory in the Copa del Rey, beating CE Europa 1-0 in the final thanks to a goal from Travieso. Pentland revolutionised the way Athletic played, favouring the short-passing game. In 1927, he left Athletic and coached Athletic Madrid, Real Oviedo and the Spain national team. In 1929, he rejoined Athletic and subsequently led the club to La Liga/Copa del Rey doubles in 1930 and 1931. The club won the Copa del Rey four times in a row between 1930 and 1933 and they were also La Liga runners-up in 1932 and 1933. In 1931, Athletic also defeated Barcelona 12–1, which still stands as the latter's worst-ever defeat.

The league title under Garbutt