aupaalaves
Striker
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=rNyTmBra2Aw
This is the video which my friend, who is a season ticket holder at San Mames, sent me which is probably the most official version of events of Athletic's history and old San Mames stadium. The video is in association with the club itself and Bilbao city hall.
I've only seen the first 15 minutes so I'll sum up what was said.
It starts off with the story of "Pichichi", Rafael Moreno Aranzadi who was an Athletic forward and supposedly the best player in the country. He was a ladies man but sadly died suddenly in 1922 from Typhus after eating bad oysters.
The Spanish top goalscorer award given by Spanish sports newspaper Marca is known as the " Pichichi" in memory of him.
The people of Bilbao and Vizcaya (Biscay) were intrigued by football after seeing English shipyard workers having a kick about. Although they weren't very good themselves at kicking the ball, they loved the way the English passed the ball in their identical strips.
They started organizing friendlies between themselves and the English and after the matches finished, the English lads would invite them to stay and eat some chicken. The English were a very warm and friendly bunch.
As for the colours. Athletic started with an all white shirt. However, these shirts got ruined after several matches so they were forced to buy more. They had agreed that they would like the blue and white of Blackburn Rovers.
So, they put player Juan Elorduy who was also a director of the club in charge of bringing back 50 blue and white jerseys as he had already planned to spend time in England. 25 of the jerseys would be for Athletic and the other 25 would be for Atletico Madrid who had been founded by people from Bilbao.
When Elorduy came back from Southampton with the 50 red and white shirts, his excuse was that of that the blue and white ones had sold out. Something that the other directors found hard to believe. They thought that he had a long, wild and happy night that he'd completely forgotten to buy the shirts and that it was a last minute dash to buy any shirts available which were of local team Southampton.
The directors of the club decided to keep the red and white shirts as they were the city's colours.
There you have it. No direct link with us. The only possible link to the region is that people from the north east helped introduce football to the Bilbainos and probably played for them up until the introduction of the Basque only policy in 1912.
Real Sociedad also had the Basque only policy but they dropped it in 1989 when they signed John Aldridge.
This is the video which my friend, who is a season ticket holder at San Mames, sent me which is probably the most official version of events of Athletic's history and old San Mames stadium. The video is in association with the club itself and Bilbao city hall.
I've only seen the first 15 minutes so I'll sum up what was said.
It starts off with the story of "Pichichi", Rafael Moreno Aranzadi who was an Athletic forward and supposedly the best player in the country. He was a ladies man but sadly died suddenly in 1922 from Typhus after eating bad oysters.
The Spanish top goalscorer award given by Spanish sports newspaper Marca is known as the " Pichichi" in memory of him.
The people of Bilbao and Vizcaya (Biscay) were intrigued by football after seeing English shipyard workers having a kick about. Although they weren't very good themselves at kicking the ball, they loved the way the English passed the ball in their identical strips.
They started organizing friendlies between themselves and the English and after the matches finished, the English lads would invite them to stay and eat some chicken. The English were a very warm and friendly bunch.
As for the colours. Athletic started with an all white shirt. However, these shirts got ruined after several matches so they were forced to buy more. They had agreed that they would like the blue and white of Blackburn Rovers.
So, they put player Juan Elorduy who was also a director of the club in charge of bringing back 50 blue and white jerseys as he had already planned to spend time in England. 25 of the jerseys would be for Athletic and the other 25 would be for Atletico Madrid who had been founded by people from Bilbao.
When Elorduy came back from Southampton with the 50 red and white shirts, his excuse was that of that the blue and white ones had sold out. Something that the other directors found hard to believe. They thought that he had a long, wild and happy night that he'd completely forgotten to buy the shirts and that it was a last minute dash to buy any shirts available which were of local team Southampton.
The directors of the club decided to keep the red and white shirts as they were the city's colours.
There you have it. No direct link with us. The only possible link to the region is that people from the north east helped introduce football to the Bilbainos and probably played for them up until the introduction of the Basque only policy in 1912.
Real Sociedad also had the Basque only policy but they dropped it in 1989 when they signed John Aldridge.
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