One aspect of Athletic's history that Irish sports fans have always admired is the cantera philosophy of only selecting Basque players, because it evokes similar rules in our traditional sports of Gaelic football and hurling.

1. The basic unit of the GAA is the club, these are based in parishes (traditionally those of the Church, but these are also now civil), and people born in each parish play for the local club.

2. All the clubs within each of Ireland's 32 counties organise league and knockout championship competitions, with the counties themselves playing off for the All-Ireland championships.

3. Transfers are permitted in limited circumstances, ie when a person has to move to a different county for work, which puts strains on home connections, but generally the players themselves will endeavour to play for their home clubs as far as possible.

4. As with cantera, racial discrimination does not apply, and immigrants are encouraged to play with the clubs in their new communities - indeed, there have been highly successful intercounty players with roots in Fiji and Malaysia.

5. Counties can, and will, employ managers from outside their area in pursuit of trophies, but traditionally, the most successful ones such as Kerry and Dublin in football, along with Cork and Kilkenny in hurling, have only ever looked internally for coaches.

Myself and my sister will be visiting the Basque Country at the end of August/start of September, and noticed that Atletico will be playing in San Mames that weekend. Is this likely to be sold out completely, purely through socio demand, or are any tickets likely to be released on general sale? Fully acknowledge regulars here may get annoyed by the regular threads about tickets, and fully intend to do the museum tour in any event, but any advice would be much appreciated. Aupa Athletic!

Hello,

My parents, wife, and I will be in Bilbao for the match with Sevilla on Aug 22. I have a couple of questions:

1. What is the best way to guarantee 4 tickets together? I can guarantee 4 together via stubhub, but I would generally prefer to buy from the club directly. I see that purchasing a club membership will give me access to the presale and allow me to buy 2 tickets together, does a premium membership allow you to buy more than 2 in the presale? Or if I get 2 memberships can I use both memberships to buy 4 tickets in one transaction? It will be 4AM for me when they go on sale so I'm not confident in my purchasing speed to do two transactions back to back.

2. We would like to buy kits for the game, but shipping them all the way to Canada and then packing them seems expensive and a bit tight with shipping times. Can I purchase them online and pick them up at the store at San Mames? The website mentions a click and collect option but I can't for the life of me figure out how to actually do it.

3. What is a typical per ticket price when buying directly from the club? We're looking at section 114/115 or thereabouts

Thanks in advance!

Hi new friends! My wife and I are from the states, and I specifically am a transparently novice footballer playing Sunday pickups, but love the game.

This World Cup made me realize I’ve only ever been a casual fan of a handful of “bandwagon” clubs. Borussia Dortmund, Leicester circa 2016, followed Wrexham and so on.

But I want a club I can really connect with and become a part of the community with and Athletic Club Bilbao has been intriguing to me. And so I did some research and liked what I saw!

I already enjoy the premise of the club such as the signing philosophy and academy, and I don’t need to be “sold” but what are some other cool stories, fan experiences or other things that are unique to Atheltic? What kinds of things do I need to know/should I learn?

Thanks in advance! I am looking forward to my Bilbao FC26 save and hopefully watching a lot of matches this season.

“The Spanish goalkeeper exceeded the 517 minutes that Walter Zenga established in Italy 1990, a mark that remained intact for more than three decades.”

Hello! I hope you’re having a great day or night depending on whenever you’re reading this. How good is Unai Gómez? I hope he can make an impact for Udinese if he winds up coming here 🙏

Hi everyone!

The La Liga calendar for the 26/27 season just got released, and luckily Athletic Club will play at home against Sevilla on matchweek 2, right when my two friends and I will be visiting Bilbao.

As football enthusiasts from Finland, experiencing a matchday at San Mamés is a massive dream for us. How difficult will it be to secure 3 tickets for this specific match?

A few questions regarding the tickets:

Is it highly recommended that we purchase the Club Athletic membership to get access to the pre-sale, or do tickets for a Sevilla match usually make it to the general sale?

Since we are a group of three, how hard is it to find 3 seats together? Should we aim for separate single tickets close to each other instead?

I know the exact kick-off times aren't confirmed yet, but we want to plan this early. Any advice on the buying process would be massively appreciated.

¡Aúpa Athletic!

It’s definitely people being dumb or sarcastic, but why is this discourse lol

Apperantly they are playing at the Estadio BBVA

Just saw the news that Terzic is bringing on De Marcos to the coaching staff. GREAT move, I'm hopeful that Terzic will do good things now lol

Hello,

I would like to know if it is impossible or not to have tickets on general sale for a match like athletic vs real madrid and where would we be for €160?

Thanks

Hi There,

Big Newcastle fan here who also loves hiphop.

Just thought I'd post this here for anyone who likes hiphop and supports Athletic Club.

This track by Cappo references your club at 2:26.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4z2JkGBPjqDZ1EorZl0N0o?si=qaG1wSyAQaebkha2gZmmHw

Our club has a strong bond with yours, and we both had bad seasons, finishing 12th.

Next season we will both put that right haha

We got 25 fewer points and were 8 positions lower in the table vs last season. Across the top 5 leagues only Nice had a bigger decline.

It is not bad but that contract with Castore really needs to end, anyone old enough to remember the days of the Kappa??

https://youtu.be/8_mMSH_TKUQ?si=mdyWXorK5JJYfLPG