Commentary on When Barca Lost to Athletic Bilbao - The Giant-Killing Legacy of Fred Pentland by Being Oneself: Marcelino and Athletic Bilbao

Join us on a mythological exploration of the history of the Basque region, its football and Freddie Pentalnd's Athletic Bilbao team that brought down the greatest giants.

Mythologists who study the lost pantheon of the Basques will tell you that the euskaldunak – or Basque speakers – believed in the duality of the world and its beings. Their concept mentions the mutual existence of two worlds: Berezko, the natural world, and Aideko, the supernatural. Transitioning from a being from the natural realms of Berezko to the occult side of Aideko is a process that requires an element of magic, which the ancient Basques called Adur . It is through the accomplishment of Adur – the magical virtue that binds an entity to its representation – that every element of this world begins to have meaning.

Mythologists will then tell you how Christianity came to a trot and how its propagators took care of these ancient traditions and beliefs, burying every shred of this "paganism" beneath their churches and cathedrals. Well, not all, apparently. But they took care of almost everything they could get their hands on and crucifixes.

However, what these scholars will not tell you is that the ancient belief of the duality of our world and its beings still exists among the euskaldunak who inhabit the autonomous Basque Country in northern Spain. It may just be a subconscious thought, but you can tell it's there. Although in a context quite different from that discussed so far.

You see, old traditions may have fallen into oblivion and become myth over the centuries, but football always has a way of reviving them.

In the city of Bilbao, home to Spanish Primera Division club Athletic Bilbao, you can almost feel the confluence of football and mythology in the air here before the weekend arrives. You can almost tell that the townspeople, rushing into their natural world, are awfully eager to transition into a supernatural realm. In Bilbao, the city is Berezko and the football stadium is Aideko. Sport itself is the virtue that connects this duality and gives meaning to things; and once the football is in action, everything makes sense.

***

If you go back in time to understand the origins of football in the city of Bilbao, you are likely to come across a group of locals huddled on the north bank of the Nervion River to "watch the hard-working Brits playing football", as Phil Ball recounts in his book Morbo: The History of Spanish Football after hearing the historical accounts of Bilbainos.

Ball notes that the "look" continued well into 1894 and seems caught up as he tries to give a reason for the "unseemly" behavior of the locals.