Athletic Bilbao B
Bilbao Athletic, officially named Athletic Club "B", is the reserve team of Athletic Bilbao, a football club based in Bilbao, in the autonomous community of Basque Country. The team will play in the Segunda División B in the 2018–19 season. Founded in 1964, the team holds home matches at the small stadium attached to the club's training facility at Lezama, or occasionally at San Mamés Stadium, with its 53,500-seat capacity, for important fixtures.
Athletic Bilbao in European football
In 2015, for the third time in seven years, Athletic lost the domestic cup final to Barcelona (who also won the league title); UEFA's rules had recently changed, so they no longer qualified as runners-up. However they also finished seventh in the league, and with absence of any qualifier from the Copa del Rey, this was sufficient to enter the 2015–16 UEFA Europa League. The first qualifying round involved a trip to Baku, Azerbaijan (the furthest distance they have travelled for a European fixture at 4,309km) where a goalless draw with Inter Baku was good enough to progress. In the group stage they topped the section, only dropping points to AZ Alkmaar, although it took two late goals from Aritz Aduriz to turn the away fixture with Augsburg on its head. Aduriz also scored in the away legs of subsequent rounds against Marseille (a volley from 35 yards) and Valencia (his former club, against whom he had already netted twice that season during league wins), and in both legs against the holders Sevilla, but there the run ended as the hosts won a penalty shootout 5–4 at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán Stadium to go through, eventually winning the trophy for the third consecutive year.
Aduriz finished as the competition's top scorer with 10 goals, and was named in the 'squad of the season'. Due to the early qualifying rounds played, the total of 16 matches in the campaign equalled the previous record set during 2011–12's run to the final.