At Athletic Club of Bilbao, the month of January creeps up with a little trepidation. It means a new transfer window has opened and, at this unique football institution, that’s a period to be negotiated with a unique set of skills. Athletic, with their superb nursery of talent, will always have players whom other clubs want to poach. But those who choose to leave can only be replaced from a limited pool because of Athletic’s proud, self-imposed principle that anybody representing the club must have a clear connection to the local area.
But this is a good, hopeful new year for Athletic, who arrived in Jeddah for Wednesday's opening fixture of the Spanish Super Cup, their semi-final against Barcelona, on the crest of a 15-match unbeaten run. They sit in La Liga’s top four. They jointly lead the Europa League table. They are in Saudi Arabia as holders of the Spanish Cup, their first major trophy since the 1980s. In their party are a trio of footballers who won last summer’s European Championship with Spain.
Among them, the most sought-out man for selfies petitioned by fans who greeted the players in Jeddah – winger Nico Williams. Around him there is sustained transfer speculation. Barcelona wanted him last summer, and were Barca’s current budget restrictions not so tight, Athletic might have feared another bid this month.
“I no longer worry,” said the Athletic president Jon Uriarte. “Nico is an important player for us, he’s from our academy, he’s come up through all our junior teams.” His older brother, Inaki, was his guide through that rise, and is often his captain in this buoyant Athletic side.
Video: Mina Rzouki takes a look at the Spanish Super Cup in Jeddah
The rise of the Williams brothers, 22 and 30, through the club’s ranks speaks to Athletic Club’s special superpower, the talent nursery that keeps them competitive in a league where Real Madrid – who meet Real Mallorca in the Super Cup’s second semi-final – Barca and Atletico Madrid hold a huge market advantage. Those clubs are a magnet for players from all corners of the globe. Athletic cannot be because of what Uriarte calls their specific “philosophy.” Others simply call it a rule. “We play with Basque players,” explains the president, “and nobody wants to change that.”
It means that, unlike any other elite club in Europe, it’s a condition that, to play for Athletic, a footballer must have a local background. They must have been born, or substantially raised, or have clear family heritage in the greater Basque country, a small area of Europe in which Bilbao is the biggest city, which extends a little way across Spain’s northern border into France.
It’s a catchment zone, Uriate estimates, of only about three million citizens. For Athletic’s talent scouts that means assessing a low number of potential players, all of whom can also look to several local alternatives if they want to be at a top division employer nearby. Real Sociedad, Osasuna and Alaves, all of Spain’s first division, are in the same region, although none of those clubs impose the same Basque-only criteria on their recruits.
But to watch the Athletic of 2025 is to appreciate that the club’s determination to retain their strong sense of locale in this most global of sports need not make them insular. To be Basque in the 21st century is to reflect a region that has known significant immigration. Up against Barca will be Yuri Berchiche, the veteran Athletic left-back who might, had an approach from Algeria for him to play for them in his 20s not coincided with a period of recovery from injury, have won 50 caps or more for the Algerian national team.
Berchiche’s father is from North Africa and later settled in France’s Basque region. He and Berchiche’s Spanish-Basque mother had moved to Zauratz, close to San Sebastian by the time Yuri was born. The young Berchiche would play his junior football in a fabled local club, Antiguoko, where in a previous generation, Xabi Alonso, Mikel Arteta and Andoni Iraola - now the head coaches of Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal and Bournemouth – were all enrolled.
The Williams brothers’ story reads like a parable. Their parents, Felix and Maria, left Ghana in the late 1990s, seeking a future in Europe. They travelled overland, making some of the journey on foot, and climbed the high fence that separates Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Maria was pregnant. The couple, aided by a charity, found a home in Bilbao, where Inaki was born. A glittering future would be ahead of him, as an Athletic icon and later a pathfinder for brother Nico in all ways but one: Inaki chose to represent Ghana internationally, Nico his native Spain.
Similar options are available to teammates Alvaro Djalo, raised in the Basque country and the son of Equatoguinean parents; and Adama Boiro, born in Senegal but, since the age of four, resident in the greater Basque region. Djalo understudies Nico Williams in the left wing role for Athletic, Boiro is head coach Ernesto Valverde’s alternative at full-back to Berchiche.
Athletic Club president
Along Athletic’s left flank, fitness permitting, the crowd at King Abdullah Sports City will witness a duel of two great football ecosystems being played out, the battle between the strictly locally-raised excellence of Athletic and the latest golden generation emerging from Barcelona’s celebrated La Masia academy.
Barca’s nursery is this season providing abundantly for the first team, its figurehead – as Pep Guardiola, Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi were in the past – the fabulously precocious Lamine Yamal, born in Catalonia 17 years ago, attached to La Masia since early childhood but, like Berchiche, a son of the Maghreb. Lamine’s heritage, through his father, is Moroccan.
Like Nico Williams, Lamine elected to play internationally for Spain, and last summer, at a European Championship enriched by their wing play, he and Williams became close friends, national heroes and global stars. Lamine scored a wonderful goal in the Euro semi-final victory over France; Williams put Spain 1-0 up on the way to beating England in the final.
“They could both have chosen to play for other countries, but Spain has them and we’re very happy about that,” said Luis de la Fuente, head coach of the European champions. “They make us stronger and greater as a country.”
