Coaching Psychology in Athletic Bilbao: The Story From Its Beginnings

Athletic Bilbao, also known by its more correct name of Athletic Club, is a professional football club based in Bilbao, in the Basque Country of Spain. Since 1912, it has adhered to its policy of only allowing players from the Basque Country to play for them. This system is known as cantera, from the word for quarry, meaning treating players from the surrounding area as a valuable resource to be extracted and moulded. Despite the self-imposed limitation of this unwritten rule, Athletic Bilbao is one of only three clubs to have never been relegated from LaLiga, along with Real Madrid and Barcelona. Here, we look at how psychology was developed in the club toward developing home-grown players, which became known as La Mirada (“The Gaze” in Spanish). A key perspective of how La Mirada developed over time was to address coaches’ mindsets before those of the players, especially because coaches often felt that their learning was going to be an upward trajectory by relying on what had given them results in other clubs. This Practical Advance paper explores this distinctive journey of psychology with examples from what was themed the lights and shadows of coaches’ and players’ learning development in Athletic Bilbao.