Bilbao (EFE).- The Athletic Club team that was proclaimed league champion in 1983 will receive a popular tribute on April 20.
It will then be the 40th anniversary of the title that the legendary barge brought to Nervión for the first time, bringing together close to a million people on both banks of the estuary.
A historic milestone that will be commemorated at the ‘Txapeldunak 40 urte-40 years of champion team: Lions for history’ gala, scheduled at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao and promoted by the ‘El Txistu’ supporters club.
The gala has been presented in the Biscayan capital with the presence of several of those champions.
The captain, Dani Ruiz-Bazán, Miguel de Andrés, Juanjo Elgezabal, Patxi Salinas and Patxi Bolaños have represented that group in an act that he had planned to attend, although coach Javier Clemente excused his presence for personal reasons.
A memorable triumph
The president of ‘El Txistu’, Iñigo Crespo, explained that this memory of a “memorable triumph” achieved by an “unrepeatable generation of players” should serve as a “transmission belt” so that “the new generations of footballers and fans” from Athletic know first-hand the feat that culminated on May 1, 1983 with the 5-1 victory at the Insular stadium in Las Palmas.
As for the gala, whose advertising poster has been made by the illustrator and former director of Athletic Tomás Ondarra and which has the support of 21 Biscayan companies, Crespo advanced that it will be held in a room at the Euskalduna with capacity for “between 600 and 700 people”.
“The majority of the members of that squad” will attend and both Athletic Club and the Bilbao City Council and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia will be invited at the institutional level.
Club members and fans will also attend until they complete a capacity that the promoters assume will be too small to meet the demand.
Daniel, the captain
Dani, for his part, thanked the initiative that will allow them to remember an “unrepeatable experience” since he considers that “as football has been put, there is a 99% chance that more leagues will not be won.”
The team that won Athletic’s penultimate league title in Las Palmas, a prelude to the League-Cup double achieved in 1984, was made up of Andoni Zubizarreta, Santi Urkiaga, Iñigo Liceranzu, José Mari Núñez, Luis de la Fuente, Miguel Sola (Txema Noriega , m.71), Miguel de Andrés, Isma Urtubi, Dani, Manu Sarabia (Julio Salinas, m.79) and Estanis Argote.
On the bench, along with Clemente, Andoni Cedrún and Patxi Salinas also sat.
That squad was completed by Carlos Meléndez, Patxi Bolaños, Agustín Guisasola, Andoni Goikoetxea, Oscar Vivanco, Teo Rastrojo, Juanjo Elgezabal, Txetxu Gallego, Ricardo Arrien and Fernando Tirapu, who died in 2018. EFE
