Underdog Stories / Football history

Why Does Athletic Bilbao Only Sign Basque Players?

Why does Athletic Club only sign Basque players? The rule dates to 1911 and is about birthplace and youth football, not blood. Here's how it works.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 10, 2026

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In April 2024, more than a million people packed the banks of the Nervión in Bilbao, by the club's own count, to watch a football team float past on a workboat. Not a yacht. Not an open-top bus. A flat industrial barge called La Gabarra, which had been waiting almost 40 years for the call. It's the sort of scene that makes visitors ask why Athletic Club only signs Basque players, and the barge is part of the answer.

The short version: Athletic picks players who were born in the Basque Country or who learned their football at a club in the Basque system. It's a rule about place and youth development, not surnames or bloodlines. It dates from 1911, and a youth academy and member ownership have kept it alive ever since.

Chris Horwedel builds his Why We Love This Club episode, "Athletic Club — The Rule That Defines the Club," around exactly this. It's worth a listen if you'd like the full tour. This is the version you can read in ten minutes.

Does Athletic Club only have Basque players, or only Basque-born ones?

Neither, strictly. Chris lists the territory the club draws from: Biscay, Gipuzkoa, Álava and Navarre in Spain, plus Labourd, Soule and Lower Navarre on the French side. That's seven historic provinces, not one city.

He is firm on what the rule isn't. In his words, the policy is about birthplace or football development, "not ethnicity, surname, or ancestry." A player born elsewhere can qualify by joining a Basque academy young enough to be formed there.

Ancestry alone gets you nowhere. Gonzalo Higuaín and Nicolás Otamendi have Basque ancestry, but they were neither born nor raised in the Basque Country, so they're not eligible. Chris calls the popular shorthand, "Basques only," misleading, and I agree with him. It makes the club sound like a blood test. It's closer to a postcode test.

Why did Athletic stop picking English players in 1911?

Because the club had been full of them. Football reached Bilbao through its port, carried by British sailors, miners and shipyard workers, and by Basque students who had studied in Britain. Athletic was founded in 1898. Its first statutes, signed in 1901 by 33 members, included an Englishman named Alfred Mills.

Then came the 1911 Copa del Rey. Athletic fielded ineligible English players, which caused a dispute with Real Sociedad. The federation's answer was a rule for the following year's competition that all players must be Spanish citizens.

That rule was later relaxed. Athletic kept going anyway. Many of the best players of the era were Basque, so relying on locals cost the club little. The club museum holds two photographs that tell the story: one of the last lineup with foreign players, in April 1911, and one of the first all-local lineup that December.

Nobody seems to have signed a founding declaration. The policy isn't in the club's rulebook, and written criteria only appeared on its website in 2008. A habit hardened into a principle. Plenty of clubs have that kind of habit. Athletic is the one that never dropped it.

Why does Athletic Club only sign Basque players and still compete?

Chris gives two reasons: Lezama and the members.

Lezama is the academy. Athletic opened it in 1971, in a town about 15 kilometres from Bilbao. The club's own history calls it the first football school of its kind in Spain, opened in 1971-72 under president Félix Oráa. The club says its youth teams underpin the principle of only fielding homegrown players.

Chris puts the consequence bluntly. Real Madrid can buy the best striker in Brazil. Athletic can't. If there's no good Basque right back, the club has to grow one, and it can't treat youth development as an optional source of transfer profit. Lezama has to produce first-team players. It has: Iribar, Zubizarreta, Julen Guerrero, Muniain, Llorente and Unai Simón all came through the system.

Then there are the members. Athletic has no billionaire, no private equity firm and no sovereign fund. Per the episode, it had 43,835 members in June 2025, and they elect the president and board one member, one vote.

The results are hard to wave away. Athletic has played in every La Liga season since 1928-29, a record only Real Madrid and Barcelona share. The club has won eight league titles. The rule limits the club, but it hasn't sunk it.

Real Sociedad, the neighbours in San Sebastián, ran a similar policy until they signed John Aldridge. That was in 1989.

“A player does not need Basque parents, a player born elsewhere can qualify by entering a Basque academy young enough to be genuinely formed there.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

Why is it Athletic Club and not Athletic Bilbao?

The official name is Athletic Club. Bilbao is the city, not part of the title, as Chris points out early on. The English word is a leftover from those British workers.

It nearly didn't survive. In 1941 the club was forced to change its name to Atlético Bilbao, following a decree issued by Franco. The regime had banned foreign words. The club recovered the name Athletic Club in 1972.

Look at those dates again. Lezama opened in the 1971-72 season, and the English name came back in 1972. I won't claim a plan joined the two. Still, the club spent three decades being told its own name was too foreign, and then built its Basque academy and got the English name back within about a year of each other. Make of that what you like.

Do the Williams brothers count as Basque?

Yes, and they're the best answer to the "Basques only" myth. Chris calls them the club's actual rule in human form.

Iñaki Williams was born in Bilbao to Ghanaian parents, who had arrived in Spain by crossing the Sahara on foot. He grew up mostly in Pamplona and was playing for a local club there when Athletic spotted him. His younger brother Nico was born in Pamplona, Navarre. Nico joined Athletic's academy in 2013. Navarre is inside the territory, and Lezama did the rest.

They split on international duty. Nico plays for Spain and scored in the Euro 2024 final. Iñaki switched to represent Ghana in 2022. Iñaki once put the local logic plainly: "If I hadn't been born in Bilbao, I could never have played for Athletic."

The rule bends in other directions too. Aymeric Laporte was born in Agen, France, with Basque heritage only through his great-grandparents. At 15 he spent a year at Aviron Bayonnais, in the French Basque Country, and at 16 he joined Athletic's academy. Critics call that a loophole. Enric Saborit, from Catalonia, moved to Vitoria-Gasteiz at 16, where his mother had relocated for work, and the club then deemed him eligible.

Goalkeeper Unai Simón is the plain case. He came up through Lezama and is now Spain's number one.

Does Athletic Bilbao still only sign Basque players?

Yes. The first team is still built from the Basque system, and I found no sign of the club planning to change that. But "sign" is the wrong word for most of it. Athletic's players mostly arrive as kids, not as transfers.

The rule has costs, and Chris doesn't pretend otherwise. It limits the squad, creates debates about eligibility, and can make contract negotiations more expensive because the replacement pool is so small. It guarantees no trophies and no good recruiting. What it guarantees, in his phrase, is consequence. When Athletic win, they win their way. When they struggle, they can't quietly abandon the idea.

Here's my own view. The rule is looser at the edges than the legend says, and I think that's why it has lasted. A rule with no give would have snapped decades ago. A rule with no spine would have become a marketing slogan.

It also applies to players only. Non-Basque head coaches, from Spain and abroad, have managed the first team. Former managers include Marcelo Bielsa, Jupp Heynckes and Howard Kendall. Chris notes the same about the club's current appointment, Edin Terzić: Athletic restricts players, not coaches.

What did La Gabarra have to do with all this?

The barge only makes sense if the players are local. The Gabarra parade began in 1983, after the league title, and the club hadn't used it since the 1984 double. It had been retired to the city's maritime museum by the time Athletic beat Mallorca on penalties in Seville in April 2024. Chris says the barge had been waiting almost as long as the club.

The players sailed 13 kilometres down the river from Getxo to Bilbao city hall. They were followed by more than 150 smaller boats chartered by fans, who paid between €250 and €3,000 to join. The squad wore replicas of the shirts from 40 years earlier. One caveat on the crowd: the club says over a million, while AFP reported hundreds of thousands.

Superstition ran deep. In the days before, the word "gabarra" was an almost taboo word in Bilbao, for fear of jinxing it. A city that had lost six straight finals wasn't going to tempt fate by saying the name.

The barge is unglamorous too. Built in 1960, it's officially classed as a pontoon boat. The most famous boat in Bilbao is, on paper, a pontoon.