page_title: Athletic Bilbao signing policy
section_title: Born in the Basque Country
hierarchical_section_title: Athletic Bilbao signing policy / Origins of players / Born in the Basque Country
caption_attribution_description: Español: Roberto Ríos, futbolista y entrenador
context_page_description: Since 1912, Spain-based 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 been criticised as being discriminatory.
context_section_description: Conversely, players born in the Basque Country but raised elsewhere are considered eligible. In the years prior to the Spanish Civil War, Athletic undertook a project named 'Operation Return', seeking players born in the Basque region who had emigrated to other countries. One of the few who actually made a competitive appearance for the club was Nemesio Tamayo who had begun his career in his adopted homeland of Chile and also played in Mexico before a brief spell in his birthplace. The arrival of Bilbao-born Emilio Aldecoa in 1947 was unusual as he had spent the past decade of his life in England, having been evacuated as a teenage refugee of the Civil War. Another member of that refugee group was the club's star goalkeeper of the era Raimundo Pérez Lezama, although he had returned home much sooner on the outbreak of World War II; a third Basque refugee Sabino Barinaga turned down an offer from Athletic and joined Real Madrid.
  Fernando Llorente was born in Pamplona but lived his whole childhood in Rincón de Soto (close to Basque territory but outside it) before he was recruited as an 11-year-old. Two of Athletic's most expensive signings, the Bilbao-born Spain internationals Roberto Ríos and Ander Herrera learned their skills in the cities where their footballing fathers were based professionally (Eusebio at Real Betis of Seville, and Pedro at Real Zaragoza respectively); Gaizka Mendieta (son of Andrés Mendieta of CD Castellón) had similar origins but turned down a move, albeit he remained a proud Basque who played for the unofficial representative team. In 2019, Athletic were reported as enquiring into the availability of young players Gonzalo Desio (the son of former Deportivo Alavés midfielder Hermes Desio, born in Vitoria-Gasteiz but raised in his parents' homeland of Argentina) and Sergio Moreno (born in Pamplona but raised in the Canary Islands and in Madrid, where he made a senior debut with Rayo Vallecano) due to their birthplaces, with no other links tying them to the club's recruitment philosophy.
caption: Roberto Ríos, born in Bilbao but raised and trained in Seville
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