aston villa now are doing the same as Barca
http://www.footballshirtculture.com/...ship-deal.html
Cant think of any other teams that refuse to have sponsors now?.. Barcelona have a charity sponsor but still a name across the front.
'Fascists dress in black and go round telling people what to do, where as priests.....'
aston villa now are doing the same as Barca
Was expecting they'd signed a truck load of brazilians or something, to break that other tradition they have...
Your Chairperson,
Gavin
Membership Advisory Board
"Ex Bardus , Vicis"
They had a sponser in UEFA Cup a number of seasons ago, so it broke it then really. As Gavin says, their tradition of only playing Basque players, I think that will continue for some time.
What about Bixente Lizarazu
http://www.footballdatabase.com/inde...xente_Lizarazu
When he joined Athletic Bilbao (please note English influence), he was asked 'You are Eskudi, we thought you were French'. His reply 'Non, non, Je suis Eskudi...pas Francais'. So he plays for them a little while and plays continues to play for the French National side and is asked by the Les Bleu fans 'you are Basquois?, we thought you were Francais' and his reply was 'oui, oui, je suis francais....toujours....'*
* Some quotes may be embellished for the reader.
" I'll go right up to here,
it can't possibly hurt.
All they will find is my
beer and my shirt."
Lack of sponsors is not the tradition I think of when hear Athletico.
Lizarazu was born in one of the Basque provinces of France.
AFAIK, the criteria for players is that they were born in one of the seven Basque provinces (four in Spain, three in France). Though an exception was made for some Venezuelan player who's parents were Spanish-Basques.
What is most impressive about Athletic is that they are one of only three teams never to be relegated from La Liga. The other two? Real and Barca.
Extratime.ie
Yo te quiero, mi querida. Sin tus besos, yo soy nada.
Abri o portão de ouro, da maquina do tempo.
Mi mamá me hizo guapo, listo y antimadridista.
Loads of Spanish players have played for Bilbao. There's a thread about it here somewhere. (Loads of managers too). Lizarazu is defintely a basque though.
Sociedad have the rule of being either Basque or foreign (i.e. not Spanish)
And of course the rules aren't written down
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
---
New blog if anyone's interested - http://loihistory.wordpress.com/
LOI section on balls.ie - http://balls.ie/league-of-ireland/
Thankfully this thread isn't what I thought it was going to be. I love being Athletic Club de Bilbao in Football Manager - the Basque only policy makes it a great challenge.
Nah not for me, I can't even stick South America because of transfer limitations.
I also thought when I read the title that they had signed non-basque players.
IMO Bilbao's basque rule is fine - embracing your own culture, whereas Sociadad's rule of we'll sign anyone who's not Spanish seems to be a bit discriminatory.
Last edited by pineapple stu; 29/07/2008 at 8:30 PM.
Extratime.ie
Yo te quiero, mi querida. Sin tus besos, yo soy nada.
Abri o portão de ouro, da maquina do tempo.
Mi mamá me hizo guapo, listo y antimadridista.
There is a difference though, signing basque and part-basque players is like having a team of Police where only members or previous members of the force may play. Comparatively Sociedads team is made up of anyone who's not a, let's say, fireman... ok it's a poor comparison but you see what I'm getting at?
Athletic discriminate against players who are not Basque whereas Sociedad discriminate against players who are Spanish.
It'd be like an Irish team only signing Irish players and having another one who won't sign Travellers.
Extratime.ie
Yo te quiero, mi querida. Sin tus besos, yo soy nada.
Abri o portão de ouro, da maquina do tempo.
Mi mamá me hizo guapo, listo y antimadridista.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I see it as one club for Basque players and one club for anyone who's not Spanish, I am aware that Bilbao is the club more associated with Basque pride etc but in terms of transfers I reckon their system is less offensive to the Spanish people.
Em, as you know people get stuff wrong.
First ask your friend is he 'from San Sebastian or Donastia (or near the city)?'.
Second, please find BBC report from 2001 regarding M. Bixente Lizarazu and the extortionate requests he suffered from the nationalists, four years after he left Athletic Club Bilbao.
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/f...zu-688316.html
My question is why you italised the 'O'?
" I'll go right up to here,
it can't possibly hurt.
All they will find is my
beer and my shirt."
Just to annoy those who are annoyed by it being pout there wrongly I'd assume. same people would do their nut at the lack of an l
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
---
New blog if anyone's interested - http://loihistory.wordpress.com/
LOI section on balls.ie - http://balls.ie/league-of-ireland/
(if 'pout' means 'put' I understand the post,)
There is a big H'istorical reason for the English spelling. It started off cultural but got political later on. And footballwise there is a famous Madrid club for comparison, which always helps.
Maybe for Billsthoughts it's anecdotal, I'll wait to find out.
There are football fans in Ireland (none on this thread) which dislikes the romanticism that many Europeans hold for England.
" I'll go right up to here,
it can't possibly hurt.
All they will find is my
beer and my shirt."
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