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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Three
Spring 2004
The Last Genuine Local Team: Athletic Bilbao Surviving in the Spanish League - Page 5
by Jonathan Shulman
Yet Barça is also a stark opposite of Athletic. It is a huge club, easily one of the leading five in the world, and it has absolutely no limitations on player purchases. This season, for example, the club has fifteen foreign players, which is not at all unusual. As Jimmy Barnes notes in his book, Barça- a people’s passion, at one point in the late 1990s under Dutch coach Louis Van Gaal, more than eight players from the Netherlands alone played for the Catalan side (23)-an authentic demonstration of the irrelevance of political borders for the game of soccer after the Bosman ruling.
To illustrate this point even further, one only needs to consider one of most admired people in the city of Barcelona, Johan Cruyff, el Salvador. As a player, he led the team to the final of the European Champions Cup. As a manager, he guided them to winning this trophy, creating the club’s best squad ever-“The Dream Team,” in which the major stars were all not Catalan: a Dane (Laudrup), a Bulgarian (Stoichkov), a Dutch (Koeman), and even a Basque captain (Bakero) (Barnes 315). When his son was born during the Franco regime, Cruyff insisted on naming him Jordi, after the Catalan saint-a name banned by the authorities. How did he get away with that? Simple-Cruyff is Dutch. A Catalan symbol indeed, but one that was born and raised on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In Bilbao, such a scenario could not have happened.
Other clubs outside of Spain have also imposed limitations on themselves regarding foreign players. Italian side Piacenza, for example, had until recently also refused to sign any non-Italian players, based on political-nationalistic beliefs. Yet, after spending the better part of the 1990s in the Italian second division, last year the club heads finally acknowledged outside help was needed in order to survive in the professional soccer scene. It is not just a matter of talent anymore, but also very much a matter of finances: a young Brazilian will cost less in wages than an equally talented European, not to mention the added training costs of a European prodigy in his youth. Athletic’s current coach is well aware of the implications the Basque-only stand has on his squad’s success. After being appointed for a second term (the first in the mid 1990s), Heynecks has made it clear he wishes to see the ban on foreign players lifted (Burgen), but to no avail. The club’s policy remains and is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
To understand fully the severe limitations Athletic is imposing on itself, one does not even have to look outside of Basque County. Alaves of Vitoria, traditionally considered a small minor club, reached the 2000 UEFA cup final under the leadership of Spanish (but not Basque) forward Javi Moreno. It is an achievement that seems miles away from the current gray Bilbao team, presently more occupied with avoiding relegation than with winning titles. Athletic has not won any major title for the past two decades for a good reason. Simply put, its squad is not good enough. At first, it is tempting to declare that nowadays all efforts to top the likes of Real Madrid are futile, but this is hardly the case. Granted, such big clubs have an almost infinite amount of resources, but other teams have won titles in recent years; even the current Spanish champion, Valencia, is generally considered to be a smaller club than Athletic. Money is not solely the issue here. Bilbao fails to win matches because of its autonomous decision to limit player purchases. Hence, in many ways the question is not whether Athletic will be able to relive its glorious past, or even not if it can survive in the world’s best soccer league with this policy in place, but rather for how long will it be able to maintain its place there.
Yet, despite recurring grim predictions, the team prevails year after year. While big-budget clubs like Atlético Madrid have been relegated to the second division, Athletic has kept its place in top flight since the league’s first day. This year, again with no major purchases, it is still unlikely to be relegated. Perhaps, after all, playing with a homogenous Basque team does have a certain value, not just in the political sense, but also when it comes to sports. True, Athletic may never be a real title contender with an all-Basque squad, but is that really the most important thing?
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