The link between two shipbuilding heavyweights
Shipyard and steel workers mainly from Sunderland,
Southampton and Portsmouth, along with Basque students who had been studying in
the British Isles, brought football to the port city of Bilbao in Spain around
the late 19th century.
A local newspaper advertisement in 1894, placed by a resident
football fan, challenged the growing English colony to a match and it took place
on 3rd May that year. The result was a 6-0 thrashing of the locals
by the English, but the interest in the sport burgeoned quickly from that point
on.
Meetings were conducted with a view to establishing a new
football club from 1898, until the founding assembly of Athletic Club gathered at
Café Garcia in April 1901 to officially announce the birth of the new organisation.
There was a rival club in operation at the time by the name
of Bilbao FC and they entered a combined team with Athletic Club, known as Bizcaya, in the Copa del Rey of 1902; a
decision was soon made to join forces permanently. In 1903, the Bilbao FC club
members authorised the merger with Athletic to form an alliance named Athletic Club de Bilbao.
Athletic set out by wearing white initially, before they switched
to blue-and-white halved shirts similar to those worn by Blackburn Rovers.
It’s a matter of debate as to why they began using
red-and-white striped shirts from 1910; one theory is that they took their
inspiration from the shirts worn by the football clubs followed by many of the
English workers, Sunderland and Southampton. However, some historians say it
was the cheapest material they could muster and it just happened to be in those
colours, so they went with red-and-white. A third school of thought is that an
Athletic Club member was sent to England to purchase blue-and-white shirts for
the team, but couldn’t find any and returned with the red-and-white they now
wear instead.
The story of stevedore (loader and unloader of ships) Arthur Pentland co-founding Athletic Club during a stint working in the city's dockyards and being responsible for changing the strips to those also paraded by Sunderland AFC has no historical record and
is possibly a myth built up by a mix-up with the name Fred Pentland, the
revered manager of Athletic Bilbao between 1922 and 1933.
There’s no doubting that shipyard workers originally from Sunderland
will have been heavily involved in the setting up of Athletic. It’s also highly likely
that the Bilbao club’s eventual colours were a nod to those English teams that
many of the exiles will have supported at the time, Sunderland and Southampton.
It may well be true that the material was the cheapest available, but that probably only served to help clinch the deal!
The historical links between Sunderland AFC and Athletic de
Bilbao go back to the very beginnings of the Basque-country club and will remain
there forever in the form of the famous red-and-white stripes proudly worn
to this day by both sets of players.
Twitter: @davewh1980
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