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COHESION

ATHLETIC CLUB DE BILBAO

Retain your talent

A unique talent pool / Pride in el sentimiento Athletic / Social purpose and talent retention / Belonging improves commitment / Different measures of success

The route started at Basilica de Begoña, the church dedicated to the patron saint of Biscay, the Virgin Begoña. The bus made slow progress onto the south side of the river that runs through the city. It was carrying the players and staff of Athletic Club de Bilbao, one of the oldest football teams in Spain. Their destination was the City Hall, only a 15-minute walk away, but this particular journey took three hours. The starting-point was significant: before every season, the club’s directors and players visit the church to pay their respects. And they ask for a good season ahead.

No one was in a rush. The noise came from all sides, people cheering, waving and singing as the bus edged through the crowds. There were thousands of them, waving flags and dancing on either side of the Ayuntamiento Bridge. You could hear them from the Palacio Ibaigane, the old-fashioned central office which Athletic still uses, where the boardrooms are oak and the woodwork a dark, dark mahogany. The vibe there is stuffy English bank rather than community club. But the people here were young and old, grandchildren with their grandparents, making memories that will last forever.

There were even some who hired boats along the river, the Ria de Bilbao, to catch a glimpse of their heroes. There were at least a hundred of them on a catamaran and another five on a dinghy.

The boats cruised in from the north-west, past the Guggenheim Museum, which stands just yards from the place where this story began. That is the Campa de los Ingleses – the English pitch – where, next to the river, British émigrés, mainly ship builders from the south coast, but also miners from the north-east, arrived in Bilbao in 1898 and were the first to play football in the city. A plaque marks the spot, inscribed with a poem written by Basque poet Kirmen Uribe:

This is where the English played.

Here on a field by the river.

When there was only grass and a small graveyard.

Sometimes the ball went in the water,

and they had to go and get it.

If it went far they threw little stones

to bring it closer to the shore.

The stones made waves, little waves

which grew bigger all the time.

In the same way Athletic played in Lamiako,

then in Jolaseta, then, finally in San Mames.

One wave, then another, then another.

The English influence is still retained: the name of the team, Athletic Club de Bilbao, is an Anglicised one, while the red-and-white striped kit came from a club member, Juan Elorduy, who sailed to Southampton with the plan of bringing back 50 blue-and-white Blackburn Rovers kits, to match the original Athletic colours. He could not find any, so instead he brought back the first kits he saw, which were the red-and-white stripes of Southampton. He brought back 50 kits in all: 25 were for Athletic Club and 25 for another club that had recently been founded by Bilbao students in Madrid: Atlético Madrid.

The culmination of the celebration came when captain Carlos Gurpegi stood on the balcony of the City Hall and raised the Spanish Super Cup to over 50,000 fans watching below. The date was 18 August 2015 and this was the first trophy Athletic had won in 31 years. They had just beaten the dominant Barcelona 5–1 over two legs, crushing the League and Cup holders 4–0 at its home stadium San Mames (where the VIP bar is called Campa de los Ingleses). Aritz Aduriz, a player that Athletic had released twice before, scored a hat-trick in the biggest club game of his career. This victory was sweeter because Athletic achieved it with a team made up only of players from the local region.

As I retrace the journey of this procession, I see Athletic imagery everywhere: cafés with Athletic flags hanging outside, kids wearing Athletic shirts on their way to school; cars with Athletic bumper-stickers. This is a club that unites the community. It makes people proud.

This local-only policy is best explained by former Athletic president José Maria Arrate, who wrote in the club’s 1998 centenary book: ‘Athletic Bilbao is more than a football club, it is a feeling – and as such its ways of operating often escape rational analysis. We see ourselves as unique in world football and that defines our identity. We do not say that we are better or worse, merely different. We only wish for the sons of our soil to represent our club, and in so wishing we stand out as a sporting entity, not a business concept. We wish to mould our players into men, not just footballers, and each time that a player from the cantera makes his debut we feel we have realised an objective which is in harmony with the ideologies of our founders and forefathers.’

The policy was established in 1919, when the club backed the city’s movement for Basque autonomy. The relationship between the two was strong; the football club was run by socios (members), who could attend general meetings and elect a president and directors to run the club. Athletic is still run on this model. The policy only counted towards players, so it was no problem that the club’s first four managers were all English. The most successful of them, Fred Pentland, was appointed in 1921.1 Basque players – from Athletic and neighbouring Real Sociedad, who dropped its Basque-policy in the mid-1980s – had just formed the bulk of Spain’s 1920 Olympic Games silver medal-winning side. Its aggressive style of play was dubbed furia Espanola, Spanish fury, a nickname the Spanish were happy to adopt – though it originated as a less than admiring term for a ferocious Spanish attack on Antwerp in 1596.

Athletic won its first trophy with Pentland in charge, the 1923 Copa del Rey. He was persuaded to leave to coach Atlético Madrid and then Real Oviedo, but returned in 1929, in time for Spain’s first season with a national league. This was the most successful period in Athletic history, as they won two league titles – the team was unbeaten in the top flight in 1930 – and four Spanish Cups between 1930 and 1933.

Pentland saw coaching as a form of education and embraced the chance to develop up to 80 players in the club’s cantera, or academy. ‘The big clubs will have a coach and … his business will be to teach the young players unity,’ he wrote in 1921. ‘This will do away once and forever with young players playing for themselves alone.’ In 1932, after Athletic’s two straight titles, Spanish newspaper AS asked Pentland to explain his success. In a series of articles, he wrote about his philosophy. It was not just technique, but ‘the psychological and intellectual aspects of a game … in which the morality and intelligence of a player are a prerequisite’.

You might think that reducing the talent pool to only three million players – while other clubs in this globalised industry can and do recruit from all over the world – would leave Athletic struggling, or playing catch-up. The opposite is true. No club has provided more players to Spain’s national team than Athletic. No province has provided more players to Spain’s national team than Biscay.

Athletic have won eight league titles and 24 Cups, and are third in the all-time Spanish trophy table (this is a big deal in Spain). Out of all the teams in the top leagues across Europe, Athletic’s total of 32 trophies is tenth in the all-time list. There are only three teams never to have been relegated from the Spanish top division: Barcelona and Real Madrid, as you might expect. And Athletic Club de Bilbao.

The morality and intelligence that Pentland wrote about gives them an edge. Their difference gives them an edge. Even their weakness gives them an edge. I went to Bilbao to find out how.

It’s the morning after another night before. Another piece of history was made at San Mames, and again Aduriz was at the centre of it. He lit up a run-of-the-mill Europa League game against Belgian team Genk by scoring each of Athletic’s goals in a bizarre 5–3 win. I thought he might not last more than ten minutes: he collided with the post after tapping in his first goal, ending a move that he began with a pass to Iker Muniain from the centre-circle. Muniain beat his man, crossed for Raúl García to head back across goal, and Aduriz scored. He played on, his 35-year-old body energised by a fervent home crowd, and scored two more before half-time. Another two goals in the second half and the papers had their headlines. ‘Historica’ wrote Mundo Deportivo. ‘Aduriz Aduriz Aduriz Aduriz ADURIZ,’ went AS. ‘We are lucky to have him,’ said coach Ernesto Valverde, with a hint of understatement.

The pick of his goals was the fourth one, when he ran onto a pass from centre-back Yeray Alvarez that split the Genk midfield and defence. Aduriz did not even need to control the ball; he just stroked it first-time into the corner of the net. Before the game, a fan told me about Yeray, a 21-year-old defender with only five starts to his name. ‘At any other club, Yeray would not get a chance. We were worried about defence after Gurpegi left the club. But instead of buying someone old and expensive and not very good, we give a chance to our youngsters coming through. Before the season began, I thought Yeray would be a five out of ten. Instead he’s playing nine out of ten. I tell you, at no other club would Yeray even get a chance.’ (It turned out to be quite a season for Yeray, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer a few weeks after my visit. He underwent a successful operation in December and was back playing 46 days later. Five days after his comeback, he extended his contract, which now has a €30 million release clause, until 2022. Sadly, the cancer returned after the 2016–17 season ended.)

On this Friday morning, I see Yeray with the first-team, having a light warm-down session at Lezama, the training-centre nestled under lush green mountains and farmhouses ten miles east of Bilbao. This is where the club’s dedication to developing locally born players into first-teamers is demonstrated. There are six full-size pitches, one with a 1,500-seater stand and a symbolic arch that was removed from the original main stand of the San Mames before its recent reconstruction.

‘At Lezama, the work done with the different teams is unique and shared by all the coaches at the club,’ runs the club’s mission statement. ‘The player is the key element, the cornerstone of our development plan, and games are the fundamental means of learning while taking on new concepts. Along with the optimisation of the player’s sporting performance, it is about the integrated development of all their personal aspects. It is about reaching the end of the process with a human psychological profile for an Athletic player. Someone who meets the demands of today’s football, and who also represents the values and idiosyncrasies of the club.’

Watching on from his office is José Maria Amorrortu. A former Athletic striker in the 1970s, he is now the sporting director. His job is to assess all the talent coming through the club. It’s his second spell in the job; he returned from Atlético Madrid (where his talent crop included Spain internationals Koke and David de Gea) in 2011, when current president Josu Urrutia, another former player, was first elected.

He too was impressed with the previous night’s performance of Yeray. ‘We can say that every day, the kid who plays at centre-back who has not been playing long for the first team, he surprises us. We can see his process of development has been a success.’

In the course of our time together, Amorrortu pinpoints three factors central to Athletic’s success that are critical to businesses today. This is where we can learn from Athletic: its social purpose to represent the best qualities of the Basque region; the investment in talent as humans first, so they feel valued and in an environment where they can develop; and the importance of talent retention which, in Athletic’s unique case, overrides almost everything.

Every year, 20 children enter the cantera aged ten. Maybe two in each year, 10 per cent, will stay and make it to the first team. It’s an outstanding return. ‘Our strength is to help all of the kids reach their potential. They know and they also push themselves, that’s why they stick with it. But that number, it’s extraordinarily good.’

When he arrived for his second spell, Amorrortu produced a planning document, called Construyendo nuestro futuro (Building our Future), that forms the backbone of Athletic strategy. He shows me the document. It demands a Lezama that is open, modern, supported by its tradition, at the forefront of development, with the best professionals and integrated in Basque sport and football. Under subheadings that include Improvement, Quality, Personal Development, Sportsmanship, Talent Identification, and Recruitment, its focus is on the development of people and not just players. Remember what Arrate wrote in the centenary book: ‘We wish to mould our players into men, not just footballers.’

This is a theme we will come back to in this chapter. Companies that invest in the human side of talent get better results than those who only focus on outcomes. Google hire people they find ‘exceptionally interesting’ regardless of academic qualifications. They look for generalists rather than those specialists who may bring their own unconscious biases. When the company was specifically looking for ‘smart creatives’, it instigated ‘the LAX test’. Google execs were to imagine they were stuck at LA airport for six hours with a candidate: did they like that individual, and would they still be creative or interesting to talk to after six hours? Did they have insight? ‘If they don’t,’ said Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, ‘I just don’t think you should be hiring them.’

Perhaps the most significant page in Construyendo nuestro futuro is the one at the back, on Social Responsibility. The task: to reinforce and expand el sentimiento Athletic, the Athletic feeling; to stay loyal to players and their families; and to carry the Athletic spirit within our daily actions. This intangible element of the club is what has sustained it for so long.

‘We have a 100-year-old culture, and that tradition is to always count on kids from our region. This has hardened into our identity,’ Amorrortu explains. ‘The values we have are fundamental and they form a culture which is the expression of a way of being. That is what Athletic has.’

So begins an elaborate verbal dance in which I try to tease out exactly what these values are and where the edge exists. Amorrortu talks a lot about feeling, belonging, culture and social capital. These are the pillars of the club, and noticeable the night before when the biggest cheers (apart from the Aduriz goals) came when local boys Iñaki Williams, Sabin Merino and Javier Eraso were all substituted on.

One club director told me part of this culture comes from one degree of separation: ‘Everyone in this city knows someone who has played for Athletic. So the sense of belonging is passed down through the generations. It’s pride. “I knew this kid and look at him now …”’ Most of the shirts on sale in the club shop don’t have player names on the back; the club wants supporters to put their own names on the back, to encourage kids to dream that one day it might be them.

Amorrortu agrees. ‘Yes, it’s about a pride in belonging to this club, belonging here, to feel part of this club. The chance that the kids might play in the first team gives them great excitement. It is these intangible things that encourage the player to make a bigger effort during his development. To feel part of Athletic is to be in communion with the values of the club. To play for this club means you identify with an idea. It’s a feeling and that’s a way of being, to feel a part of something. Athletic represents a lot. It is not only the team of the city, it also represents a philosophy.’