Tradition Rooted in Our Land: The story of Supercopa winners Athletic Club

The artwork on Athletic Club’s team coach didn’t need changing. Without a trophy in 31 years, the graphics showing the Basques’ 24 Copa del Reys, 8 league titles and one Supercopa were untroubled. As was the Gabarra, a squat barge built in Basque style in a town once famous for ship builders. The Gabarra only sails down the Nervion River when Athletic win a trophy, carrying the players.

Athletic (incorrectly known as Athletic Bilbao by some), with their Basque only policy of players and their incredible support, had come close to winning trophies by reaching cup finals, but they hadn’t won anything. Football’s globalisation had worked against them too. Clubs became more cosmopolitan and scouted around the planet; Athletic’s quarry was limited to the 2.5 million Basques – the same population as Greater Manchester. And that’s exactly how their fans wanted it to stay.

“The strength of our tradition is rooted in our land like a proud oak,” explains lifelong fan Inigo Olmos Ureta. And what a tradition Athletic Bilbao have. It was the club of Zarra, seven times Spain’s leading scorer as he netted 251 goals between 1940 and 1955. The club who, in the early 1980s under the authoritarian coach Javier Clemente, lifted consecutive league titles. Such was the strength of talent at San Mames in 1984, Athletic’s first-team won the league and cup double, while their ‘B’ team finished runners-up in the second division, denied promotion only because of Spanish rules.

It was the club who considered Real Madrid their greatest rivals because they represent Spanish centralism, power and money. And Real Sociedad, their neighbours, who fight for the same players but who dropped their Basque only policy in 1991 because they couldn’t compete with the more powerful Athletic. They did so by signing a Scouser, John Aldridge.

Athletic stuck to their Basque rule - and slipped with it. They were in danger of a first ever relegation in 2007 (Athletic, Barça and Real Madrid are the only three who’ve never been relegated) and their Basque only policy was seen as anachronistic by some.

“Our situation is difficult and complicated,” said former coach Mane, in charge in 2007. His team had five or six players good enough to be playing Champions League football, yet obvious deficiencies. But the Basques were not for changing.

“People are patient,” wrote then club president Jose Maria Arrate in the club’s centenary. “They know to accept it when we don’t win. It’s not like at Madrid where signings are made if the team is doing badly. Nobody has proposed signing foreigners.

“Athletic have never been relegated. There are teams with very good foreigners who have been relegated. It’s an obstacle, but the break in the relationship between the team and the fans would be very big. In my class at college, there was someone who played for Athletic. Everyone has a neighbour who played for Athletic. In small towns, there are former players, youth players, even managers of Athletic. They love the team.

“Real Madrid fills the Bernabéu every Sunday, but thirty thousand of them are tourists. They are at Real Madrid today and Chelsea tomorrow. They can’t identify with those who are playing, if they’re here today and at another team tomorrow.”

Athletic improved from that 2007 nadir. The Lions long had a reputation for playing like an English side; fast, physical and direct. It wasn’t always pretty, but under subsequent coach Joaquin Capparos, they changed as he nurtured and guided an emerging group of players. Then Marcelo Bielsa got them playing like champions. After they’d knocked Manchester United out of Europe in 2012, Sir Alex Ferguson was full of praise for the Basques.

“I wish them well,” he said. “They have a cause. It’s a wonderful thing to see, using such incredible energy to win football matches.”

Athletic lose some of their best players. They didn’t hold back Javi Martinez (Bayern Munich), Fernando Llorente (Juventus) or Ander Herrera (Manchester United), but they’d be even better with them.

“The people are very demanding,” said Herrera of Athletic fans. “Bilbao is Athletic. The kids on the street, they’re not Barcelona or Madrid.”

He was one of the few players to sign for a transfer fee and coupled with 44,000 average crowds, Athletic are a rich club, one of just six in Spain who weren’t either in debt or behind on their tax payments last season. With help from the Basque government, they replaced the famous old San Mames with a superb new 53,300 seater stadium positioned high above the river in the centre of town. The arch from the old home is now at their Lezama training ground, another source of local pride on the lush fields near the hills outside Spain’s fifth biggest city. Fans are free to watch almost every training session.

It’s a one-club city and the whole place buzzes in anticipation ahead of big games, with people of all ages wearing red and white and thousands of flags adorning Bilbao. It will be like that on Sunday ahead of the first home league game of the season, a third match in nine days against Barcelona.

And Bilbao looked resplendent for the celebrations on Tuesday, though the barge didn’t sail. There were no repeats of the images shown in a huge photo at the old San Mames stadium of a victorious Athletic team sailing through the city surrounded by an armada of boats and thousands of delirious people on the river bank. Well, would you get in a boat that hadn’t moved for 31 years?

There were further happy scenes as the team returned from Barcelona, having drawn the second leg of the Spanish Super Cup 1-1; the Basques and their fine manager Ernesto Valverde having hammered Barça 4-0 in the first leg. Over 50,000 fans welcomed the players around a bridge in the city centre outside Bilbao’s city hall. The players also went to say their thanks at the Basilica of Begona in a city where religion is important.

The team coach? Someone made an impromptu ‘2’ in biro on a notepad and stuck it above the one Supercopa sign.