Athletic Bilbao signing policy

Since 1912, Spanish association football club Athletic Bilbao have had an unwritten rule whereby the club will only sign players who were born in the Basque Country, or who learned their football skills at a Basque club. The policy is related to Basque nationalism and has been praised as a way to promote local talent, although it has also been criticised as being discriminatory.

In the first decade of their existence Athletic selected English players for the team, but since 1912 they have adhered to a cantera policy of allowing only players born in the Basque Country or who learned their football skills at a Basque club to play for them. The motto used to describe the reasoning behind it is "Con cantera y afición, no hace falta importación" (English: "with home-grown talent and local support, you don't need foreigners"). They were not the only club to adhere to such a policy; fellow Basque club Real Sociedad had a similar policy but this was dropped in 1989 when they signed the Republic of Ireland forward John Aldridge. The policy is not written into the club's rulebook but was a philosophy of the club in order to promote local players.. The policy also extends to Athletic's feeder clubs of CD Basconia and Athletic Bilbao B and to their youth teams.

The policy has been praised as a symbol of localised football being successful at the highest level, as well as preserving a strong regional identity and being a way for Basque nationalism to be moderately expressed. It has been described as discriminatory for only allowing Basque players to play for Athletic Bilbao, although it has been suggested that the policy is working for them since Athletic Bilbao are one of only three clubs (along with Real Madrid and Barcelona) never to have been relegated from La Liga.

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Wikipedia