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Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics

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The other Basque subversives: Athletic de Bilbao vs. the new age of soccer
Juan Carlos Castillo
a a

Department of Modern Languages, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, USA

Available online: 10 Oct 2008

To cite this article: Juan Carlos Castillo (2008): The other Basque subversives: Athletic de Bilbao vs. the new age of soccer, Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 11:6, 711-721 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430430802283997

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Sport in Society Vol. 11, No. 6, November 2008, 711721

The other Basque subversives: Athletic de Bilbao vs. the new age of soccer
Juan Carlos Castillo*
Department of Modern Languages, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, USA

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Athletic de Bilbao is perhaps the main focus of resistance against the new age of soccer. Athletic has refused to give in to many of the pressures that the new soccer world imposes on teams. It is well known that Athletic hires local players only, keeps an extensive network of youth teams and practices salary containment. Athletic has also resisted converting into a public limited company and remains a club owned by its member fans. It still plays without a sponsor on its shirt and has vowed to accept only local sponsors if at all. It even started its own brand to avoid the pressures of big companies and ensure that the money their fans spend on kits and club paraphernalia stays in the community. It plays in an old stadium where fans bring home-made sandwiches instead of selling out concession stands. Athletics television ads have underlined the special nature of the club by rejecting convention and embracing the outcast. It remains to be seen if this philosophy can survive the competitive (Athletic almost fell down to the second division for the rst time last season) and economic (a brand-new stadium is in the works) challenges ahead.

The recent theorization of what we will here call the new age of football has characterized the new trends using two main adjectives: Giulianotti calls it post-modern1 whereas Miller et al. prefer the term global.2 Beyond terminological discussions, in both theories the emphasis of the new age of football rests on the commodication and globalization of the sport, two processes obviously connected to each other. The commodication of football has been most visible in the commercial exploitation to which the sport has been subject by a corporate conglomerate of television networks, apparel companies and endorsement sponsors, as well as the football clubs and their associations and leagues. Globalization has made football markets open up, allowing the free movement of players and the borderless spread of football fandom and consumerism, turning star players into global celebrities, teams into international mosaics and winning clubs into transnational corporations. Given the connections many times pointed out between globalization and free market tendencies,3 it is not surprising that the two trends have gone hand in hand in football. It has been said many times that clubs need to adjust to the new situation in order to be successful in this age. Clubs need to compete for the best players regardless of their national origin and footballing background; they need to appeal to audiences not just at the local, but also at the national and global, level; they need to nd ways to win championships and be present at continental and global competitions; they need to ensure themselves the biggest shirt sponsors, the best apparel deal and the best television contract; they need to increase ticket-sale revenues by offering a more spectacular and entertaining experience for the fans; they need to commodify every possible aspect of the stadium, including luxury boxes, nostalgia museums and concession

*Email: juan.castillo@uni.edu
ISSN 1743-0437 print/ISSN 1743-0445 online q 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17430430802283997 http://www.informaworld.com

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stands. There is a model of club that ts the new age and any winning club must stick to it or else face fan oblivion, competitive decline and economic failure.4 Spanish football includes some of the global icons of the new trends, such as Real Madrid5 and FC Barcelona,6 recently declared the two richest clubs in the world.7 Other Spanish clubs have risen out of mediocrity with crafty and intelligent use of the newly available resources, such as Valencia CF (Spanish League champion in 2002 and 2004 and twice runner up in the European Champions League) or Deportivo La Coruna (winner of the Spanish League in 2000 and semi-nalist in Champions in 2004). All of these clubs have made use of the global market, signing celebrity players as well as cheaper role players from different countries to play on their teams. Yet Spanish football also includes one of the best known hold-outs in the new age of football: Athletic de Bilbao. The club is known worldwide for its policy of signing only Basque players, cited as a rarity in the new age in works by Giulianotti8 and Miller et al.9 This so-called philosophy of the club has been in place since 1919, even though it has been applied with different degrees of rigidity since its inception. The complexity of Basque society itself precludes a single denition of Basque player, and thus the different criteria have ranged from a blood-line purity ideal initially,10 to birthplace during Francos years,11 to a more open denition of civic citizenship in recent years. Athletic de Bilbao as an institution and its community of fans have reacted to the new age of football by resisting it and subverting the acceptable role (using the term in Esteva and Prakash) of a club.12 Athletic not only refuses to give in to the forces of the global market on the issue of player signing, but also has taken a proud stance in favour of different forms of subversion against the prevailing system. I will argue that Athletic gives us a football example of what Esteva and Prakash call grassroots post-modernism. In the terms of Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk, Athletic has chosen to be a non-subject in the new age, acting and thinking in ways far removed from those of the modern football, in this case.13 This essay will try to show some of the ways in which Athletic has made of subversion against the football system its main identity and banner of pride. Athletics philosophy as a form of identity Ancestral football clubs were based on the idea of the local hero:14 teams were made up of players from the local community, and represented that community in increasingly widereaching tournaments. The post-Second World War era can be said to have started the development of football as a true global phenomenon, with the solid establishment of the fouryearly World Cup, and the introduction of organized annual continental championships. The participation of clubs in continental competitions increased the need to recruit players outside the national borders, thus leading to the appearance of teams such as the dominant Real Madrid of the late 1950s, full of international stars such as Di Stefano and Rial (Argentina), Santamara (Uruguay), Puskas (Hungary) and Kopa (France). At the same time, national federations put caps on the number of foreign players allowed to play in each club. In Spain, the Franco administration outlawed the signing of foreigners from 1962 until the 1970s, leading to the often fraudulent naturalization of oriundos (players of Spanish origin).15 Eventually the number of foreign players allowed to play for one team was raised to two, and then three. The birth of the European Union and its rules for the free circulation of labour threw the football system into chaos. Despite the opposition of the European (UEFA) and national federations, the famous Bosman Ruling of December 1995 abolished the EU-internal barriers to players from the Union. Following that sentence, there could be no restrictions to the hiring of players from the Union by clubs of the EU. This not only opened the European market to all

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players born in the Union, but also to any player naturalized in any of its countries, thus letting in a great number of players from former European colonies.16 Clubs took immediate advantage of the new rules, and as early as the subsequent 1996 97 season, we read reports of Spanish teams elding as few as two Spanish-born players in a game.17 Against this background, Athletic not only chose to maintain its philosophy of hiring only local players, but actually made it the focus of the clubs identity, as shown by a recent television commercial sponsored by the clubs foundation. The ad shows scenes of Athletic fans showing their devotion for some of the biggest stars of all time: a boy receives an Athletic shirt with Platinis name on it for Christmas; a bumper sticker on a Bilbao car reads I love Kempes; a group of fans at the Bilbao airport await the arrival of Stoichkov with welcome banners; worried fans cheer a goal by Koeman; footage of an old Spanish Cup nal shows a banner with Di Stefanos name on it; a bus in the 1970s carries fans from a supporters group called Pena Cruyff; a banner with Beckenbauers name on it is left behind in an empty San Mames stadium.18 At the end of the ad, we are asked why not? and were given the answer: por amor propio, a Spanish expression that can be translated as love for oneself, but also as pride or dignity. The commercial can be simply analysed as a bilbainada, that is, an act of arrogance that has come to be identied with the stereotypical personality of the city of Bilbao and its citizens.19 It is somewhat dubious that, had Athletic decided to give up its philosophy, it would have had the economic resources to sign players such as Di Stefano, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, Platini or Koeman.20 Yet Athletic is saying that, even given that possibility, the club would still have never signed them. Thus the ofcial message is not that Athletic is forced into its philosophy in part because of its economic limitations, but rather its philosophy is a free choice on the part of the club. The club is therefore projecting the idea that it has consciously chosen to reject the rules of the new age of football, which include the necessary competition for the best available players in the world. Athletic has decided to become a non-subject (in the sense of Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk) in the system of global football. The club chooses to form players through its system of youth teams and the recruiting of young talent from nearby towns, in addition to the occasional signing from other professional clubs of players born in the Basque Country, including Navarre and the French Basque provinces.21 Even though many authors have tried to identify Athletic de Bilbaos hiring philosophy in terms of rigid denitions, the only plausible way to interpret it is by opposing a exible idea of the local to that of the global.22 In fact, one of the ways in which societies confront the challenges of globalization is by defending their local communities, including cultural and social customs, foods and economies. Athletic subverts the idea that clubs have to be devoid of their local ties and live in a semantic vacuum where fans can create their own meanings for their favourite club.23 Instead, the Basque club is radically local, because it wants to preserve the ties between the players and its community. Athletic thus refuses to become a team of 11 strangers . . . with whom most fans have hardly any demographic factors in common, in Sandvoss words.24 In fact, Athletic fans frequently have something in common with the players: a neighbourhood, a school, a common acquaintance, a family tie.25 Athletic thus remains a much territorialized club, a fact that should grant it a very loyal local following, but should also hurt its chances of attracting large numbers of fans elsewhere. The club has also tried to maintain a policy of salary containment, which at times has precluded it from keeping its best talent. Starting with the case of Jesus Garay, a player whose sale to FC Barcelona in 1960 helped to nance the building of a new stand in San Mames stadium, Athletic has long been a provider for richer clubs, especially Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Time and again, the club preferred letting its best players go rather than creating deep discrepancies among the rosters salaries. This policy stands in strong opposition to the model

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that Real Madrid tried in recent years. That model was dubbed Zidanes and Pavones,26 because it combined big global stars with millionaire salaries, such as Zinedine Zidane, with homegrown young players paid modestly, such as Francisco Pavon. Where Real Madrids model represents the extremes of capitalism meritocracy, Athletics salary containment policy once again refuses to give in to the pressures of the new age of football and follows its own established principles, even if it compromises the maintenance of a high talent level.

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Athletic and the Bilbao Effect It is important to understand that Athletics philosophy represents a tradition on the part of the football club and does not necessarily imply the close-mindedness of the city of Bilbao or Basque society in general. In fact, the clubs policy seems fully contradictory with the other phenomenon that has given the city global celebrity and which has come to be known as the Bilbao Effect. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bilbao faced the aftermath of the dismantling of its industry and its transformation into a service-sector city. The projects included the removal from the city of all the remains of the old commercial seaport and its supporting infrastructure of shipyards and train terminals, which occupied most of the banks of the Nervion river. Also included were the construction of a metro system, a new airport, new bridges and other public works. Bilbao decided to contact globally known architects, and soon the names of Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Cesar Pelli and Arata Isozaki among others were associated with the revival of the city. Frank Gehrys Guggenheim Museum, inaugurated in 1997, became the last architectural icon of the twentieth century, and many cities followed suit resorting to the hiring of the same architects looking to achieve the same results. The Bilbao Effect follows the two main themes of the global era: commodication and globalization. Regarding the commodication of the museum, since the opening of the museum, the tourism industry has grown considerably in Bilbao, with the construction of several new hotels and a new convention centre. Nero states that no one disagrees with the rising economic status of the city of Bilbao, nor do they diminish the Guggenheims role in that turn-around.27 That commodication has had global impact as well, as the image of the museum has become synonymous with that of the city around the world. The city of Bilbao has used the museum to promote the city globally. Among the strategies used are its appearance in a recent James Bond movie, and the organization of an international car race in an urban circuit designed in the area surrounding the museum. Athletic has not followed the Bilbao Effect with regard to its hiring of players, but it has on the issue of the new stadium, which will be built and managed by a public society that includes the club, the City of Bilbao, the local Biscayan government (Diputacion Foral) and the leading local nancial institution, BBK. Internationally known architects like Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava and Zaha Hadid offered designs for the new San Mames, but in the end the managing group chose the Basque company ACXT. The club thus appeared to follow the appeal made by the Basque Institute of Architects (Colegio Ocial de Arquitectos Vasco Navarro) to apply its philosophy to the building of the new stadium.28 Athletics philosophy is thus better understood as a tradition of elding players from the area linked to the belief that the football club must represent its local community. Athletic has not applied that policy to other aspects of the club, such as coaches. Similarly, the clubs philosophy does not necessarily extend to other areas of society in Bilbao and its metropolitan area. The city has chosen instead to embrace cosmopolitanism as part of its reconstruction, while at the same time trying to maintain many of its traditions, including Athletic and its philosophy.

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Athletics shirt as a form of subversion Athletics philosophy has not been the only way in which the club has chosen to subvert the rules of the new age of football. A second form of subversion has been the refusal to sign apparel contracts and secure shirt sponsorship. In fact, these two actions have taken opposite directions in the clubs recent history, so they require specic discussion. Apparel contracts have become so prevalent in the world of football that Miller et al. refer to the 1998 World Cup nal as a match between Nike (apparel provider for Brazil) and Adidas (provider for France).29 The drive to sell kits has moved teams away from their traditional colour schemes and patterns and to sport newly designed shirts nearly every season. The addition of player names and xed numbers seems one more move to force fans to buy a new shirt when a player leaves their club and his number is passed on to another one. The apparel companies have also been very successful in creating a culture of wearing team shirts to the stadium, a practice sometimes despised by traditional fans.30 In the past, Athletic was part of this culture, by signing contracts with apparel providers such as Adidas and Kappa, but the interests of these companies lie in the promotion of clubs bigger than Athletic. Giulianotti points out the inherent perversity in the fact that fans of smaller clubs, who buy their clubs shirts and other forms of apparel, end up supporting the fat contracts achieved by the bigger clubs that are sponsored by the same companies.31 In order to subvert this system, Athletic de Bilbao avoided the global companies and decided to launch its own brand of apparel in 2001. Since then, the club has developed a full line of clubrelated paraphernalia, including training gear, casual wear, watches and other kinds of accessories. Like other apparel companies, Athletic brand has also resorted to frequent cosmetic changes in the home kits layout, as well as experimentation with different colours and designs for the second and third away kits. Athletic brands commercial strategy in this instance is a prime example of what Giulianotti and Robertson call glocalization, whereby local cultures adapt and redene any global cultural product to suit their particular need, beliefs and customs.32 One such example is the commodication of nostalgia, already described by Giulianotti.33 Athletic brand has designed kits that represent throwbacks to old uniforms, like the recent white one, as well as homage to players in the clubs past, like the black kit that was supposedly inspired by the colours worn by long-time goalkeeper Jose Angel Iribar. However, what is subversive about Athletics brand is ensuring that all the money spent by Athletic fans on team apparel reverts back to the club and its providing companies, instead of beneting rival clubs. Athletic brands commercial strategy has also made use of measures that we could call subversive. Among them, two examples stand out. In 2004, Athletic presented a revolutionary shirt designed by local artist Dario Urzay and meant for the upcoming UEFA Cup. Urzay abandoned the traditional vertical red and white stripes, and replaced them with owing globs of red on the white background. The shirt merited several design awards, including the Graphic Arts National Prize from the prestigious National Academy of the Arts in 2005, and was also a commercial success,34 but was perceived by traditional fans and commentators as ugly and too radical for the conservative world of professional sport. Some Athletic supporters protested the change of shirt and the newly elected president Fernando Lamikiz used the return to the old shirt as an argument during the campaign. The shirt was only used in friendly games that summer but was replaced as soon as Lamikiz took power. An even more subversive measure was the employment by Athletic brand of famous British streaker Mark Roberts in one of its television commercials in 2002. Roberts earned his celebrity by jumping naked onto the pitch of widely televised sports events throughout the world, including the Golf British Open, Wimbledon, the Super Bowl and the UEFA Champions League

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nal. The Athletic ad showed a football game in a stadium full of naked people, including the entire audience, players, referees and even the police forces, while we can hear a TV commentary of the game in English. At one point, Mark Roberts jumps into the pitch wearing an Athletic kit, and is immediately captured by the naked policemen while the commentators react with the usual amusement when they recognize the streaker. The punchline reads Expose yourself and announces the new Athletic line. The ad won several awards from the advertising industry and was shown on media outlets around the globe, providing Athletic and its brand with a great amount of free publicity. Yet, such audacity must be considered subversive. In the interests of common decency and the safety of players and spectators, the presence of spectators on the pitch is discouraged. Television networks have decided to move their cameras away from such events to reduce their public impact and have even resorted to time-delays in order to erase such events from the live feed. Nonetheless, Athletic once again chose to side with the subversive, refusing to t into the acceptable roles that the world of football expects. The issue of shirt sponsorship is moving in the opposite direction. Several authors have mistakenly pointed out that FC Barcelona is the only major football club in the world that has refused to show a sponsor on its shirt (at least until they accepted a charity endorsement with UNICEF for the 2006 07 season).35 Athletic de Bilbao has also kept its kits free of publicity until now. However, if in the case of team apparel, the club has gone from following the conventional to being subversive, in the case of shirt sponsorship the club is ready to join the rest of the football community. In fact, Athletic did show publicity during the UEFA Cup of 2004 05, in which its shirt showed the word Euskadi, the Basque term for the Basque autonomous region. This brief staining of the shirt was the result of an economic agreement with the Basque Government to promote in Europe tourism in the Basque Country. Once the team was eliminated from the competition in March of 2005, the shirt went back to its original form. Nevertheless, the front ofce of the club has been given the power to enter a contract for shirt sponsorship, albeit with a restriction that once again comes to subvert the rules of the global football. The member assembly only allows the club to enter shirt sponsorship agreements with Basque companies. The club once again tries to demonstrate its commitment to the local community and its economy, by trying to keep in it as much of the revenue it generates. Finally, in the summer of 2008 Athletic reached an agreement with the Basque oil company Petronor to start displaying its name on the team shirt starting in the 2008 2009 season. San Mames vs. McDonaldized stadia One last form of commodication that has been related to the new age of football is that of the stadium experience during football games. Clubs have refurbished their stadia in order to turn them into money-making machines. The move from standing terraces to all-seater venues has both reduced the capacity and improved the comfort of spectators, thus justifying a steep increase in the price of admission on both grounds. This mallication, in Giulianottis terms, has alienated working-class fans and has created a new culture of middle-class spectators.36 Much like at an American stadium, the experience of attending a game now requires the additional expenses of food and drinks at the concession stands inside the stadium. Once again, Spanish football giants like Real Madrid provide prime examples of this new type of stadium. Years ago, then Real Madrid player Jorge Valdano used the term stage fright (miedo escenico) to describe the environment that visiting teams found at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium. Another Real Madrid player, Juan Gomez Juanito threatened an Italian rival saying that ninety minutes at the Bernabeu is a heck of a long time.37 However, after several

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renovations and the loss of standing terraces, the new environment at Bernabeu recently led Real Madrid President Ramon Calderon to declare that its stadium nowadays feels more like a theatre. According to a recent article in El Pas, fans do not expect to inuence the outcome of the game anymore: Bernabeu lacks working-class terraces. It is divided into boxes, VIP areas, stores and restaurants which guarantee the rational and exhaustive exploitation of its facilities.38 Athletics San Mames still preserves the feel and the experience of an old stadium. Even though the club lost roughly 6,000 spaces with the elimination of standing-only spots, the club installed retractable seats in the curbs behind the goals to allow easy standing for those fans who wish to follow the game that way, without the danger of overcrowding that forced the safety measures. Prices are still affordable in those areas of the stadium, and especially so for children under 14. There are no luxury boxes, and the seats and prices are simply scaled according to their position on the eld and the availability of cover from the weather. Athletic fans still preserve the old tradition of bringing a homemade sandwich to the game, which everybody gets out and eats at half-time. This ritual is so embedded in the experience of attending a game at San Mames that it can be considered an instance of preservation of communal food against the imposition of industrial eating39 in, literally, McDonaldized stadia.40 The club cooperates by not trying to enforce the purchase of food in the stadium concession stands. In this case, Athletic is not taking a subversive stance per se, but it allows fans to follow their own tradition, despite the possible revenue that could be collected from selling at exclusive concession stands and forbidding the bringing of food into the stadium. In the stadia of the new age of football fans have supposedly moved from participants to mere spectators.41 Even though it is difcult to quantify fan involvement and participation in the case of Athletic, there are some facts that may shed some light on the issue. During the 2005 06 campaign, Athletic spent most of the season in or near the relegation positions on the table. Nevertheless, attendance did not decline, and San Mames registered the fourth-best percentage among all 20 Spanish clubs at an average 84% of its capacity. It is signicant that all the other clubs that fought with Athletic to avoid relegation had noticeably lower attendance percentages (between 15% and 20%). One way to interpret these numbers is to assume that the fans perceived their role in supporting the team in difcult times as very important, and furthermore they kept their frustrations to themselves until the last game of the season, when the team had already secured its place in the First Division. It is also signicant that at that last game of the 2005 06 season, while the crowd gave a standing ovation to the players, it also showed its disapproval of the front ofces job by booing, whistling and waving handkerchiefs at the presidential box. Athletic fans understood the difference between supporting the team and censoring the clubs elected ofcials. However, this cannot be understood as an instance of what Lee calls the love the team, hate the club mentality among disenfranchised fans of English clubs.42 Athletic is one of the four remaining professional football clubs in Spain that are owned by the fan membership and this fact gives the fans another way to participate directly of the clubs fortunes. On the last day of the 2005 06 season, the members disapproval was not the type of desperate plea that comes from Englands supporter associations, but rather a spontaneous political demonstration of the kind that can bring a government down. Athletics front ofce is elected by the club members every four years and the fans discontent, right at the mid-term point, sent a clear message to the president and his cabinet. In the case of Athletic, rather than the dichotomy team-club, there is a three-way distinction between the team (understood as a group of players), the club as an institution, and the elected ofcials that make the executive decisions. During the whole season, despite their obvious frustration with the competitive situation, the teams play and the ofcials job, San Mames fans showed their appreciation for the team and the club. Whether this communion between the fans,

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the club and the players can be penned to the territorial ties between the three is hard to say. But if the new age of football requires deterritorialized clubs in order to attract more spectators, Athletic has instilled in its fans its desire to subvert the system. Athletic fans, although perhaps small in number, do not resign themselves to be mere spectators, and rather feel participants in the destiny of a club with whose players they can truly identify and whose future they can decide. Surviving in the global game Athletics subversive stance in the competitive world of global football begs the ultimate question: can such an idiosyncratic club survive in the new era? The answer lies in the future, but at least we can anticipate that survival will not be easy. Athletics philosophy has always been not only that the club must represent its local community, but also that this is the best way to achieve desirable competitive results. So far, this has been true. Athletic, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are the only teams to have always played in the First Division of Spanish football, where the three teams with the lowest standing are relegated at the end of each season. Athletic is also the third Spanish club in number of trophies won (counting League and Cup trophies), and points earned in the history of the league, even though it has not enjoyed the success that other Spanish clubs have in European competitions. Even in the years after the Bosman ruling, Athletic is still the fth best team in Spanish football. However, a series of questionable decisions by former President Fernando Lamikiz have thrown the team into the depths of the league standings. During the 2005 06 season, Athletic irted with relegation, avoiding it mathematically just on the next-to-last game. In 2006 07, the team started so badly that the President was forced to resign amid continuous protests by the crowds at the stadium. For the rst time, relegation may be in the clubs near future. While Athletic brands business seems to be protable, the club has already reached a sponsorship agreement, thus ending its status as the last professional club not to show a sponsor on its jersey. The club is also negotiating with the city for the construction of a new stadium. It remains to be seen if the club may maintain its current policy of open doors to outside food or if it will try to nance part of its cost by enforcing consumption at the new stadium concessions. The same questions could be asked about the policy of affordable tickets and childrens special prices. Recently, the leading Bilbao newspaper El Correo ran a series of columns by distinguished members of the community debating the state of the club and the convenience of maintaining the clubs philosophy.43 Even though the perception is that the majority of the members and fans support the philosophy (although perhaps not in numbers as high as those reported by MacClancy),44 several of the authors advocated a change in the clubs hiring policy. The main arguments used by those in favour of abolishing Athletics philosophy were: i) the philosophy is untenable from the competitive point of view in todays football world; ii) competitive results are necessary in order to maintain a presence in European and global football; iii) there are not enough Basque players available because of low birth rates and the increasing competition from other Basque teams; and iv) the philosophy is anachronistic and does not reect the plurality of Basque society and the new global reality. Those in favour of the philosophy argued that i) the poor competitive results are the consequence of bad administration and not a necessary consequence of the philosophy; ii) hiring players from outside does not guarantee better competitive results; iii) the team thrives on the sentimental attachment to the fans that the philosophy provides; and iv) the philosophy makes Athletic unique and ensures fan loyalty beyond the competitive results. The debate effectively ended with an interview in which then president Ana Urquijo insisted that the club will maintain its philosophy. Several authors have pointed out the exibility of

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Athletics philosophy, sometimes as a strength,45 sometimes as a weakness.46 However, most of its supporters have had to admit that Athletics policy needs to adjust to the realities of the new Basque society, admitting in its ranks the new immigrants from other countries that have come to live in the Basque Country, the same way it did when the immigrants were coming from other parts of Spain. In the words of Esteva and Prakash, the challenge of grassroots post-modernism is how to catch up with the latest mutations of the economy.47 Athletic may not have to give up its dream of always elding a local team, but its denition of what a local player is will have to continue changing and adjusting in order for the philosophy and the club to survive. It remains to be seen if Athletic will nally buckle and give in to the pressures of the new age of football, following the example of the city and its Bilbao Effect, or if, on the contrary, it will survive and perhaps succeed and become a model for other clubs to follow. Athletic would then create its own, very distinct, Bilbao Effect. Notes
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Giulianotti, Football. Miller et al., Globalization and Sport. See for instance the readers Held and McGrew, The Global Transformations Reader, and Lechner and Boli, The Globalization Reader. See the early analysis of these traits in Alt, Sport and Cultural Reication, especially 97 100. Carlin, White Angels. Foer, How Soccer Explains the World. Deloitte, Football Money League 2007. Giulianotti, Football, 123. Miller et al., Globalization and Sport, 30. Duke and Crolley, Football, Nationality and the State, 29. Leguineche, Unzueta and Segurola, Athletic 100, 84; Castillo, Play Fresh. Esteva and Prakash, Grassroots Post-modernism, 78. Dion-Buffalo and Mohawk, Thoughts from an Autochthonous Center. Mason, Our Stephen and Our Harold; McFarland, Creating a National Passion, 255ff. Lanfranchi and Taylor, Moving with the Ball, 97 9; Ball, Morbo, 223. Lanfranchi and Taylor, Moving with the Ball, 233; Villegas Lazo, La Sentencia Bosman, 14; Gil Araujo, Futbol y migraciones. See the discussion in Castillo, The concept of loyalty. Michel Platini was the captain of the French national team that won the European Championship in 1984, and the Juventus (Turin, Italy) team that won the European Cup in 1985. Mario Kempes was the main star in the Argentine team that won the World Cup in 1978. Hristo Stoichkov from Bulgaria and Ronald Koeman from The Netherlanders were two of the biggest names in the FC Barcelona Dream Team that won the European Cup in 1992. Johan Cruyff was the star of the famous Clockwork Orange Netherlands team in the early 1970s and Franz Beckenbauer was the captain in the German team that beat them in the 1974 World Cup nal. Argentina-born Alfredo Di Stefano was the leader of the dominating Real Madrid team of the 1950s. On the deep connections between Athletic and the city of Bilbao, see Aranes and Landa, El Athletic Club como institucion and Bilbao y el Athletic. In fact, this argument is often used to defend Athletics philosophy: if the club decided to hire players at the global scale, it would probably be unable to compete economically for the best talent: Leguineche, Unzueta and Segurola, Athletic 100, 87. Athletic has been reluctant to put its philosophy on paper, but these are roughly the terms of the version that the club posted briey on its ofcial website during the administration of Javier Ura and, after his death, his successor Ignacio Ugartetxe. See the discussion of it in Castillo, Play Fresh. The current front ofce of the club has returned to the unwritten form of the philosophy, removing the link from the ofcial webpage.

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29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47

Castillo, Play Fresh. Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves, 166. Ibid., 169. Leguineche, Unzueta and Segurola, Athletic 100, 93. Burns, When Beckham Went to Spain, 391; Carlin, White Angels, 117. Nero, Computers, Cladding, and Curves, 70. J.P. Martn, Arquitectos vascos reivindican su opcion de construir el nuevo campo, El Correo Digital, June 28, 2006. Miller et al., Globalization and Sport, 30. King, Football Fandom and Post-National Identity. Giulianotti, Football, 106. Giulianotti and Robertson, The Globalization of Football, 546. Giulianotti, Football, 104. M. J. Daz de Tuesta, Premio para una camiseta repudiada, El Pas, January 20, 2006. Among them, Giulianotti, Football, 89; Foer, How Soccer Explains the World, 196. Giulianotti, Football, 79 85. Toro, Anecdotas del futbol, 133. D. Torres, El Bernabeu ignora a Calderon, El Pas, January 19, 2007. Esteva and Prakash, Grassroots Post-Modernism, 52. Lee, Grey Shirts to Grey Suits, 48; Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves, 1, 105ff. Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves, 167. Lee, Grey Shirts to Grey Suits, 41. The opinions can be read at the newspapers webpage: http://www.canalathletic.com/portal/content/ view/9401/0/ MacClancy, Nationalism at Play, 195. Leguineche, Unzueta and Segurola, Athletic 100, 85. Ball, Morbo, 77. Esteva and Prakash, Grassroots Post-Modernism, 105.

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