At. Bilbao:The spirit of the people - 西班牙

這篇是舊的文章
提到了地域主義的思想跟意識形態


※ [本文轉錄自 LFP 看板]

作者: Catalan ( 學長永遠是對的 ) 看板: LFP
標題: [文化]Athletic Club Bilbao: The spirit of the people
時間: Mon May 24 16:35:18 2004

找論文資料找到的
給大家做參考

http://www.footballculture.net/teams/feat_bilbao.html

Athletic Club Bilbao: The spirit of the people
Jon Wilkinson, March 2003

Andoni Zubizarreta, Athletic Club Bilbao’s Sports Director,
and former Spanish goalkeeping hero spoke to footballculture.net
about the club, its ambitions and its policy of using Basque-only players.

Athletic Club Bilbao, one of Spain’s oldest and most successful teams,
are currently mid-table in the Spanish Primera Division. Being a top-flight
side is remarkable due to their unique policy of recruiting players only
from their local region.


“Like all teams, we’d like to win everything,” said a smiling
Zubizarreta, “but the problem with ambition is that it focuses
people on always coming first. The real ambition for this club is
to reach a good competitive level. Things are very tight in the
Spanish League, and in Europe in general, so it’s about focussing
on producing a good competitive team and taking it from there.”

The interesting thing about Athletic is that they aim to achieve
this good competitive level by using Basque players only. The 2.5 million
people of the Basque region, in Northern Spain are proud of their culture
and language (spoken by over 30% of the people). They also enjoy a certain
degree of political autonomy from the rest of Spain.

Athletic maintain their policy of only using Basque players. Though as
Zubizarreta is keen to point out “there is some flexibility in how you
define a Basque.”

“If an English family settled in the region and then brought up their
children within the Basque culture, then the club would certainly
consider them Basque, and provided they were good enough, they could
play for Athletic.”

Most famously, the club signed the France and current Bayern Munich
defender, Bixente Lizarazu, from Bordeaux, in 1996. People thought
this signing of the first foreign-national Basque signalled a relaxation
of the policy. Though further relaxation has not followed.

“It would be easy for us to sign a 15-year old talent from somewhere
else in order to try and improve the team, much like the other big clubs,
but it is important to us that our players have a passion for Basque
culture,” maintains Zubizarreta.

Athletic’s policy is in marked contrast to that of some of their
Spanish rivals.



Real Madrid President, Florentino Perez, recently said, "I have heard
a lot recently about signing David Beckham. He is a great player but
we will not sign everyone on the market." Though denying links with
Beckham the current Real side already boasts many of the world’s most
famous players, Ronaldo, Figo, Raul, Roberto Carlos, and Zidane, among
others.

Like most top European clubs, Real Madrid’s side is full of players
from many different nations.

But Zubizarreta shows no jealousy of his famous rivals. “Athletic
remain committed to developing grassroots football in the region and
have been doing so for over 40 years. We will continue to develop local
players.”

The club goes back a lot farther than 40 years, being founded in 1898
by local traders and engineers from northern England. The English influence
is still very much evident today with Athletic maintaining the English
spelling (rather than the Spanish name, Atletico) and wearing a strip
very much like Premiership side Sunderland.

When asked if there is pressure on the club from fans to bring in foreign
players Zubizarreta says, “That they want the club to continue to try and
represent the spirit of the Basque people.”

This is born out by a major project currently being carried about by
Athletic Bilbao, which brings together people from all sectors of Basque
society – cultural, business and political – in order to strengthen and
improve the club.

The underlying philosophy is that the club’s future will still be based
on representing Basque culture and spirit, rather than influenced by match
results.

The project hopes to identify how this can be best achieved, and focuses
on developing the grassroots game. It’s not only about developing young
players but improving all the living conditions for people in the Basque
region.

As Zubizarreta sums up “we hope this project will support and reinforce
our existing philosophy, and further strengthen the club.”




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