Athletic Bilbao and a history lesson as they prepare to take on Newcastle United at St James’ Park | OneFootball

Athletic Club, commonly known in this country as Athletic Bilbao, are Newcastle United’s next opponent in the UEFA Champions League.

Most football fans are familiar with the fact that Athletic Club, or Athletic as they are referred to in Iberia, has an official policy to only recruit players who are born in the Basque Country, or that have come through the academy of a team that plies its trade in the region.

This has been Athletic’s position since 1911 and whilst this is something that has both its admirers and its detractors, it goes without saying that this puts a brake on how successful they can be. With a population of 2.2 million, this is akin to Newcastle United only fielding players from Tyneside, Northumberland and County Durham.

Although there can only be a tiny percentage of the Basque population being of the right age, gender, and having the necessary skills to be able to play for the club, it hasn’t stopped them from enjoying success down the years.

In fact, Athletic are the fourth most successful club in La Liga with eight titles to their name. In terms of the Copa del Rey (Spanish cup), Athletic is second only to Barcelona, having won it 24 times (or 25 times if you include the 1902 version that Club Bizcaya, a team comprising players from Athletic Club and Bilbao FC won, something that the Royal Spanish Football Federation still refuses to acknowledge in its official annals).

Athletic are known as Lehoiak (The Lions) because their stadium was built near a church called San Mamés, which was named after Saint Mammes, an early Christian thrown to the lions by the Romans (I’m willing to wager he would have enjoyed Athletic’s win over AS Roma in last season’s Europa League round of 16 encounter).

Athletic are of course, famous for their red-and-white stripes, which were introduced when one of their players brought to Bilbao a set of Southampton shirts in 1909.

Juan Elorduy, an Athletic player and board member was tasked with purchasing a set of blue-and-white shirts in the style of Blackburn Rovers on a trip to London that year (up until then, Athletic had played in blue and white). However, Elorduy left his mission until the last day of his trip and was unable to find the jerseys he had been sent to look for. The following day, whilst waiting to catch the ferry back to Bilbao, he was still searching in the port city of Southampton. Preferring not to go home empty-handed, Elorduy purchased 50 red and white striped Southampton shirts, which in part due to the official flag of the city of Bilbao being red and white, the board accepted. The rest as they say, is history, and apart from the occasional narrowing or widening of the stripes, the colouring and style has remained for 111 years.

(ED: Our thanks to Dave for the two photos featured in this article, he bumped into these Athletic Bilbao fans down in Durham on Tuesday)

In recent times, Athletic has enjoyed relatively little in the way of success, although they did win the Copa del Rey for the first time in forty years in 2024, defeating Real Mallorca in a penalty shootout at the Estadio de La Cartuja in Seville.

That was Athletic’s first Copa del Rey title since 1984 when Andoni Goikoetxea, the ‘Butcher of Bilbao’ kicked Barcelona’s Diego Maradona in the chest during a mass brawl, Athletic winning the cup by a solitary goal. Despite the antics of Goikoetxea, who a few months earlier had achieved notoriety when he broke Maradona’s ankle in a foul referred to as one of the most brutal in the history of Spanish football, this was something of a golden era for the club. Coached by Javier Clemente, Athletic won the league and cup double in 1984, having also won La Liga the previous season.

In 1994, Newcastle United met Athletic over two legs in the second round of that season’s UEFA Cup. United were back in Europe for the first time since the 1977/78 season and after hammering Royal Antwerp 10-2 on aggregate, went into the match against Athletic full of confidence. I attended the first leg at St James’ Park that evening and recall a few things.

First off, we played in our away kit, an all-blue number with the McEwans Lager logo emblazoned across the player’s chests.

Second, goals from Peter Beardsley, Andy Cole and Ruel Fox put us in a commanding three goal lead and those in attendance could have been forgiven for thinking that our European adventure was going to take us into at least the third round. Not so. In rather alarming fashion, that three goal lead was pegged back in the last twenty minutes with Jose Angel Ciganda and Gonzalo Suances giving Athletic enough of a foothold in the game to see them progress on the away goals rule, Ciganda scoring the only goal in the return leg.

I didn’t travel to Bilbao in 1994 but I know some who did, and the consensus was (still is) that it was a fantastic trip, despite the result. The Bilbao fans were terrific, and a real bond was established all those years ago. In researching this article, I stumbled across another written for The Mag by ‘Horsey’ that helps capture this sentiment.

At this current time, Athletic are a little off the pace in La Liga and have lost two of their opening three Champions League encounters, at home to Arsenal and away to Dortmund, a couple of very tough matches. Their solitary win came last time out, a 3-1 victory against Qarabag FK who beat Benfica in matchday one. Whilst I expect a sterner test than the one Benfica gave us last month, I still expect Newcastle United to win.