Bilbao Football Club was a football team based in Bilbao, Spain, which existed during the years 1900 and 1903. In 1902 they combined with city rivals Athletic Club to form Bizcaya, a team which won the 1902 Copa de la Coronación.[1] The following year they were absorbed by Athletic Club.

Bilbao Football Club

Players of Bizcaya, the combined team of Bilbao FC and Athletic Club
Founded	1900
Dissolved	1903
Ground	Lamiaco pitch

History

Early Years

Football arrived in Bilbao at the end of the 19th century, thanks to English merchants who arrived in Bilbao by boat and shipyard workers from Southampton, Portsmouth and Sunderland. The football fever grew quickly in the city, and thus, just two years after the founding of the first club in Bilbao, Athletic Club; José Luis Villabaso, aligned with the English workers and founded the Bilbao Football Club at the end of 1900, in the Biscayan neighborhood of Getxo.

Naturally, a rivalry soon arose between the two Bilbao teams, who had to take turns playing on the makeshift Lamiaco pitch while sharing rental costs. Unlike Athletic, most of Bilbao FC's players were British. The Athletic team only had one foreigner (Alfred Mills) in its ranks and Bilbao FC themselves only had one Spanish player in their team, a goalscorer named Guinea.[2] As a result of the rivalry between Bilbao FC and Athletic, they played a friendly match that ended in a draw. The match aroused great expectation, so both teams agreed to call a new match to define the winner of their meeting, but this time charging a ticket price of 30 cents of a peseta (that was the first time that a paid match was held in Biscay). The second leg was played on 19 May 1902, and also ended in a draw at 1-1.[3]

Bizcaya FC

In 1902, the best players of each club came together to form a combined team, known as Club Bizcaya, which was specially created to take part in the 1902 Copa de la Coronación, the first-ever (unofficial) Copa del Rey. They returned with the trophy after defeating Barcelona 2-1 in the final with goals from the captain Juan Astorquia and Armand Cazeaux, both of Athletic.[1]

Decline and Collapse

Juan Astorquia, the then president and team captain of Athletic, used Bizcaya FC's successful campaign to convince Luis Arana of how necessary it was to merge the two clubs. Furthermore, the owners of Bilbao FC began to lose interest in their team, which at the end of 1902 was going through a certain institutional crisis, and so, on 24 March 1903, Bilbao FC and its associates were officially and definitively absorbed by Athletic Club.[4]

Presidents

• Jose Luis Villabaso (since 1900)
• Carlos Castellanos (until 1903)

See also

History of Athletic Bilbao

References

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