The Athletic–Barcelona clásico refers to football matches between Athletic Bilbao and FC Barcelona, two clubs competing in Spanish football competitions.
The two clubs are among the oldest in the country, and have participated in every season of the national championship, La Liga. Owing to this, as well as contesting nine finals of the Copa del Rey (in which they are the two most successful clubs), it is the third most-played football fixture in Spain, after the meetings of each with the third constant member of the league, Real Madrid. Due to this, it has been referred to as a Clásico, the modern Spanish term for a significant and traditional fixture (a classic) which is not a derbi based on geographical proximity.
The relationship between Athletic and Barcelona has historically been fairly healthy aside from certain periods when competitiveness became hostility, such as in the early 1980s. By the turn of the 21st century, the rivalry had largely become a historical concept due to the disparity in the fortunes of the clubs and the lack of a local element, but their frequent meetings in matches of importance, including four Copa del Rey finalsThe eight previous cup finals between FC Barcelona and Athletic Club, FC Barcelona, 14 April 2021 and three Supercopa fixtures in a dozen seasons, restored some relevancy to the fixture.
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Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona are both owned by their socios (members) who elect a president to oversee club affairs.El Barça vivirá su primer referéndum total (Barça will experience its first total referendum), www.mundodeportivo.com, 2 March 2014 (in Spanish). Retrieved on 20 January 2020 They also place great importance in developing local players through their cantera (youth systems), and were among the last major clubs to adopt a commercial sponsor logo on their jerseys (Athletic doing so in 2008 and Barcelona three years later).
These two clubs are the most successful clubs in their respective regions of the Basque Country and Catalonia, both regions who have more support for separatism than other parts of Spain. As a result, these two clubs tend to identify themselves more so with regional culture than with Spain as a whole, such as with Athletic's adherence to a unique 'Basque only' player policy and Barcelona's self proclaimed commitment to Catalan independence and identity.
Barcelona in particular have a far more intense rivalry with Real Madrid – perceived to represent the dominant Castile region and the Spanish royal family – sometimes known as the Gran Clásico, it has become simply El Clásico; they also contest a local derby in Greater Barcelona against Espanyol which too has political aspects. Athletic Bilbao's attitude towards Real Madrid is also more frosty than their relationship with Barcelona due to the differences in the political and cultural identity of the clubs, and they have a significant local rivalry in the Basque autonomous region with Real Sociedad.
History The date of the first meeting between the two clubs is a matter of debate. The final of the 1902 Copa de la Coronación was played between Barcelona and Club Biscaya (a combined team of Athletic Club and Bilbao FC, which merged the following year); Biscaya won the match 2–1. Athletic regard themselves as the successor to the Biscaya team and the Copa Coronación as the first edition of the Copa del Rey, including it with later wins in their official honours. However, the Spanish Federation gives 1903 as the commencement date for the Copa del Rey, disregarding the previous year's tournament in its records, so it has never been fully established if they regard Biscaya and Athletic as the same club or not. Barcelona's team in the final also included players from Hispania AC, meaning theirs was also something of a combined force rather than a single club entity.
Athletic and Barcelona were both successful in the early years of the national cup: between 1903 and 1920, the Basques won seven Copas and the Catalans three (including wins for both in the 1910 edition where two competitions were held, both considered official retrospectively), but they did not face each other at any stage of the tournament until their first undisputed meeting in the 1920 Final held in Gijón, which Barcelona won 2–0. In the following edition, Barcelona withdrew in protest after the federation changed the venue of the final to Bilbao, and it was the 'home' club who eventually took the trophy.
Regional qualifying leagues were introduced, and Athletic became the dominant club in the Biscay Championship (from 1913) while Barça were the strongest in the Catalan football championship (its earliest version was held in 1901). In that period, the two clubs introduced measures which led to them becoming important symbols of their respective homelands, Athletic implementing a policy of using only local players in response to being criticised by opponents for selecting too many foreigners, and Barça adopting Catalan as their official language. In that era, matches were played by representative teams from each of the regional leagues, including several fixtures between Catalonia and the Basque Country.
La Liga beginnings and Franco era The teams did not meet again prior to the establishment in 1929 of a national professional league championship, La Liga, which would see them face off regularly and become rivals for the title: Barcelona won the first edition but failed to make much impact thereafter, suffering the humiliation of a 12–1 defeat at the hands of Athletic Bilbao in 1931 (Bata scoring seven in what still ranks as the biggest win in the history of the competition) and also losing the 1932 Copa del Rey final to the Lions. Athletic were champions four times in the following seven seasons up to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
In broad terms, Catalonia and most parts of the Basque Country fought on the losing Republican side in the conflict, and the victorious Nationalist regime soon introduced measures against regional languages and cultures. In 1941, football teams with 'foreign names' and symbols were required to amend them to a Spanish equivalent, thus Club de Fútbol Barcelona and Atlético de Bilbao became the official titles of the historic clubs and the Catalan flag was replaced with the Spanish on Barcelona's crest (the short-lived Republic had done the same with Royalist symbols in the previous decade, altering the names of clubs such as Real Madrid and Real Sociedad and removing crowns from their crests). This oppressive centralist atmosphere in society contributed to the clubs becoming even more important to the local populations, the stadium being one of the few places where they could speak their language and express themselves freely. In this regard, the clubs had much in common and meetings between them were akin to an international fixture, with the regional representative teams also having been disbanded.
In the domestic league, the performances of Barcelona and Athletic were comparable until the 1960s, with the Basques winning only two titles during the period from 1939 to 1960 compared to seven for the Catalans, but both finishing near the top of the table most years. Athletic won seven cups to Barcelona's six, although the finals between them in 1942 and 1953 both went the way of the Blaugrana. The Barça coach in the latter match, Ferdinand Daučík, soon took over at Athletic, and won trophies with both clubs.
Daučík had moved to Spain at the same time as his son-in-law and the club's star of the period, the Hungarian László Kubala, who was the first of several foreign imports to make an impact (although the vast majority of players would remain Spanish until much later), winning the league several times plus two Inter-Cities Fairs Cups and a Latin Cup, and enduring a narrow defeat in the 1961 European Cup Final; he suffered a serious knee injury inflicted by Athletic's Eneko Arieta in 1954. During his stay, the club also opened their massive ambitious Camp Nou stadium, the cost of which would weaken the club economically for many years. Real Madrid had moved to a larger ground a few years earlier, and they too signed talent from Eastern Europe and South America as well as from around Spain which propelled them to further domestic and continental success, with the positive international exposure pleasing the regime.
Athletic had a talented forward line in that era, spearheaded by prolific striker Zarra who set multiple goalscoring records including most goals in a season, most overall league goals, most hat-tricks, most goals by an opposition player against Real Madrid, and most goals in the Athletic vs Barcelona fixture. However, just prior to the introduction of regular continental competitions, he and his peers passed their peak, and from that time on the club were unable to consistently compete with their old foes for honours. They continued to use only Basque players, and chose to redevelop their San Mamés stadium rather than constructing a replacement, with much of the funding sourced from the transfer of their defender Jesús Garay to Barcelona in 1960.
1977 UEFA Cup tie
Athletic and Barcelona both took part in the 1976–77 UEFA Cup having won only one league title between them in almost two decades (Barça in 1974), and both eager for glory in Europe. They were drawn together in the quarter-finals; it was the first time Athletic had played another Spanish team in a continental tournament. The two clubs had already played both league fixtures that season, the Catalans winning 3–1 in Bilbao and the Basques claiming a 2–0 victory at the Camp Nou ten days before their UEFA Cup tie. The tie was played in an unusually friendly atmosphere due to the similar regional identity of the two clubs, whose supporters were excited by the prospect of a brighter future for their respective territories after the death of dictator General Franco and the weakening of his regime. By that point, the clubs' original names and identity were restored.
In the tie, Athletic held on for a 2–1 lead at San Mamés and led by the same scoreline by half time in the second leg thanks to a brace of away goals from Javier Irureta, requiring Barça to score three more times in the last 45 minutes. They could only manage one, through Johan Cruyff (their biggest foreign star of the era), so the Lions qualified for the penultimate stage of a European tournament for the first time. They reached the final, but lost to Juventus.
Violence in 1983–84
Background By the early 1980s, Barcelona were becoming desperate for major success. They had still not won La Liga since 1974, and in addition to Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid who usually had talented squads, Real Sociedad from the Basque city of San Sebastián had assembled a strong team composed entirely of local homegrown talent, who finished above Barça in 1979 and continued to improve, being runners-up the following year before winning back-to-back titles in 1981 and 1982, overtaking Barcelona in the closing stages of the latter campaign. The Catalans hired famous coaches Helenio Herrera and Udo Lattek, but were left unsatisfied even with Copa victories in 1978 and 1981 (after overcoming Athletic in the semi-finals) followed by UEFA Cup Winners' Cups in 1979 and 1982. They had paid a world record transfer fee to bring Argentina star Diego Maradona to the club, followed in 1983 by his compatriot and mentor César Luis Menotti as head coach.