When Manchester United face Tottenham in Wednesday’s Europa League final in Bilbao, the two English teams should feel quite at home.
Football culture in the Basque city in northern Spain has always had a close connection to England, former Athletic Club player and coach Javier Clemente tells The Athletic.
“Bilbao has always liked English football, that was the style Athletic looked to,” says Clemente, now 75. “Very physical, really committed, very brave, lots of battling, lots of team spirit. The fans are similar too — their way of supporting and sharing everything with their team. The old San Mames was just like an English ground, the atmosphere similar to Anfield or Old Trafford.”
Both Manchester United and Tottenham have been allocated 15,000 seats for the final at Bilbao’s recently modernised 53,000-capacity San Mames stadium. An estimated 40,000 more supporters are expected to soak up the atmosphere and watch the game in the city’s many bars.
Locals had dreamed of Athletic themselves playing the final in their home stadium — until United scored three goals in 15 minutes in their semi-final first leg at San Mames on May 1.
“I’ll be at the game and I’ll enjoy it, although I would have liked to see Athletic in the final,” Clemente says. “It’s important that Manchester United and Tottenham fans show respect and good sportsmanship. There’s a little bit of fear now, of people losing control, of hooligans. But the atmosphere when Manchester United were here a few weeks ago was really good.
“Bilbao is a very welcoming city, you eat very well here, and there’s lots of bars. Hopefully they’ll have a good time, and we’ll enjoy having them.”
San Mames was rebuilt in the early 2010s, on the same site as the previous ground, which had stood there for a century. The venue — and Bilbao itself — has retained its connection to the United Kingdom, Asier Arrate, director of AC Museoa (Athletic’s club museum) tells The Athletic.
“The idea with the new San Mames was to keep the spirit of the old stadium, which was very ‘English’,” Arrate says. “When it comes to football, we’ve always looked a lot to England. The whole city has. Bilbao is very British. Just look at the name: Athletic Club. It could not be more English.”
Despite Athletic being perhaps best known these days for the club’s ‘Basque only’ policy of signing players, their links with the English game are numerous, and go way back to its origins. In fact, that connection actually played a major role in their decision to focus solely on bringing through local talent.
The first recorded football match in Bilbao was between English sailors from different ships docked along the river Nervion in June 1889. Other Brits working in burgeoning mining, steelworks and shipbuilding industries helped form the earliest teams in the city. The sons of the Basque industrial elite learned to play while at English boarding schools and universities, then properly established Bilbao’s first clubs on their return.
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“The engineers, the workers, the upper-bourgeois families, they all wanted to play football,” Arrate says. “And we learn here very quickly.”
Cornish-born engineer Alfred Mills was one of the first 33 socios (members) who founded Athletic Club in 1901, and he later captained the side in defence. He had arrived in Bilbao as a child, when his father worked for a telecoms company connecting Spain to England.
Athletic played early games at the ‘Campa de los Ingleses (Camp of the English)’ down by the city’s docks. Now the super modern Guggenheim Museum, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, stands on the site.
A view of the Guggenheim and Nervion river in Bilbao, pictured in May (Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)
“Many people think it was called Campa de los Ingleses for all the English who played football there,” Arrate says. “But it was actually the old protestant graveyard, where most of those who were buried were British.”
In the first official matches, Athletic began wearing a blue and white strip. Juan Moser, an Athletic player of Irish descent, bought the strip from Blackburn Rovers. They then changed to red and white stripes in 1910, with the accepted story for years being that club member Juan Elorduy, who was studying engineering in the UK, had returned with 50 Southampton jerseys picked up at the port on his way home.
More recently came claims that the red and white shirts were actually from Sunderland — due to the influence of William Dyer, whose businessman father was Bilbao’s British consul, and who won a 1904 Copa del Rey medal with Athletic.
“The Elorduy family always thought it was Southampton, but Sunderland is logical for the relationship between Athletic and the north of England,” Arrate says. “I don’t know for sure. It’s all part of the legend of the club.”
Around 100 English-born players represented Athletic Club in its first dozen years of existence — most immigrants who had come to the city to work, or their children.
A standout was forward Martyn Veitch — who scored in a 3-1 win over Espanyol in the 1911 Copa del Rey final. Following that season, there were complaints (including from Basque neighbours Real Sociedad) that Athletic had brought in professionals from England, against the regulations of the time.
“The ‘foreigners’ before 1910 were people who lived in Bilbao or had connections to the city,” Arrate says. “It’s true that in 1910 and 1911 the club went to England and looked for professionals. The rules required six months (of residence) in Spain, and La Real took up an official case.”
That was what led Athletic to adopt their now famous policy of only fielding players either born or developed within the Basque country.
Yet, the English influence remained strong. A Mr Shepherd (first name lost in the history books) was the club’s first official manager in 1911. London’s Shepherd’s Bush FC were invited to the inaugural tournament when San Mames opened in 1913. Former West Ham and Sheffield United player Billy Barnes oversaw Athletic’s 1915, 1916 and 1921 Copa del Rey wins.
Athletic fans outside San Mames before the first leg against Manchester United (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
The most famous English manager in Athletic’s history is Wolverhampton-born Fred Pentland, who coached the team which won the first two La Liga titles in 1929 and 1930, plus the Copa del Rey five times during two spells in charge.
“People say the British coaches brought organisation and professionalism — Barnes first, and then Pentland,” Arrate says. “There’s a bit of mythology about it. When Pentland left, the team won the next two La Liga titles too. Bilbao produced great players.”
A more solemn connection between Bilbao and English football came after the Basque town of Gernika (Guernica in Spanish) was bombed by the air forces of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, at the behest of Spain’s dictator General Francisco Franco, in April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.
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Some 4,000 children were sent to the UK for their safety, over a dozen of whom later played professional football. Sabino Barinaga and Raimundo Perez Lezama both learned the game in Southampton — and then faced each other when Lezama’s Athletic Club beat Barinaga’s Real Madrid in the 1943 Copa del Rey final.
Manchester United’s links to San Mames go back to a European Cup quarter-final first leg in January 1957, when Athletic won 5-3 amid a terrific snowstorm. United won the return 3-1 at Maine Road three weeks later for a 6-5 aggregate victory. The following year, seven of the United team who played at San Mames were among the 23 players and staff who died in the Munich air disaster.
❄️ 𝟭𝟲 𝗝𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝟭𝟵𝟱𝟳
Our first encounter came in the 1956/57 European Cup quarter-finals.
A 5-3 thriller, the first leg is well remembered due to the scoreline and the heavy snowfall, something which is quite rare in Bilbao.
An Ignacio Uribe brace and a Felix… pic.twitter.com/fTUOvHMRnm
— Athletic Club (@Athletic_en) April 28, 2025
“The game in the snow against Manchester is famous, very mythical,” says Arrate. “My uncle escaped from school to watch it. It was tremendous — 50,000 people packed in, and all standing.”
During Clemente’s time as a player, one of his managers was Ronnie Allen, from Staffordshire, who guided Athletic to second place in La Liga in 1969-70. When a rookie coach himself, Clemente visited England to speak with then-Ipswich town boss Bobby Robson, before taking elements back home and guiding Athletic to the 1982-83 and 1983-84 La Liga titles.
“Ipswich was a small town but they won the (1981) UEFA Cup, so I thought the coach must have an interesting way of working,” Clemente says. “I went there and talked to him, watched the training sessions. He was really good to me. Back here, I put into practice what I’d seen and liked. Howard Kendall managed the team after me. The sporting connection with England has always been there at Athletic.”
Bilbao, with a population of around 350,000, has lots of experience hosting big events. England played three games there during the 1982 World Cup. The first stage of the 2023 Tour de France started and ended in the city. Barcelona beat Lyon 2-0 in last year’s Women’s Champions League final at San Mames.
When Roma visited in this season’s Europa League last 16, there were incidents between visiting and local fans, and bottles and flares thrown at police outside the stadium. Twelve officers were injured and six locals arrested in clashes after Athletic knocked out Rangers in their quarter-final second leg.
There were no serious incidents during United’s first visit three weeks ago, but there is some wariness about an English ‘invasion’ for the final. Local estimates have suggested as many as 55,000 visitors from the UK, with 170 charter flights scheduled to land at Bilbao and nearby Vitoria, San Sebastian and Santander airports in the days before kick-off.
Athletic fans were desperate for their team to set up a home Europa League final (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Last week, the regional government’s security minister Bingen Zupiria said the security deployment would be the biggest for any single event in the Basque Country’s history.
“I won’t hide that I’m nervous, you get worried in this job sometimes,” Zupiria told Cadena Ser. “But it’s a magnificent occasion for our visitors to bring away a marvellous impression.”
Although UEFA has not designated the final as ‘high risk’, there will be three ‘security rings’ around San Mames on game day, featuring thousands of officers from the Basque Ertzaintza police, municipal police and the club’s private security. Ertzaintza officials visited Wembley to speak with British counterparts in recent weeks. Officers from Greater Manchester Police, Met Police and the UK Football Policing Unit will also be present in Bilbao.
Fan Meeting Points have been organised around the city with entertainment and refreshments served. Some 32,000 litres of beer were reportedly ordered for the United fans expected to gather at Etxebarria Park, with a similar quantity readied for Tottenham supporters at the Amezola square. The Arenal Park meeting point has family-friendly entertainment, with training sessions for kids, exhibitions of traditional Basque sports and a Europa League legends five-a-side game at 12pm local time on Wednesday.
“I wouldn’t say fear, but there is concern about how the city will be affected, with restrictions on traffic and public transport,” Athletic fan and Radio Popular reporter Benat Gutierrez told The Athletic.
“People are worried about how visiting fans will behave, and also how the hospitality industry will react, with hotel prices shooting up and beers costing €10 (£8.40; $11.20). There’s a feeling of a lost opportunity for Athletic to win the trophy in their own city. But there’s also pride at hosting the final, and a hope that it all passes off without incident.”
(Top photo: Diego Souto/Getty Images)
