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 signing policy
In the years prior to the Spanish Civil War, Athletic undertook a project named 'Operation Return', seeking players born in the Basque region who had emigrated to other countries. One of the few who actually made a competitive appearance for the club was who had begun his career in his adopted homeland of Chile and also played in Mexico before a brief spell in his birthplace. The arrival of Bilbao-born Emilio Aldecoa in 1947 was unusual as he had spent the past decade of his life in England, having been evacuated as a teenage refugee of the Civil War. Another member of that refugee group was the club's star goalkeeper of the era Raimundo Pérez Lezama, although he had returned home much sooner on the outbreak of World War II; a third Basque refugee Sabino Barinaga turned down an offer from Athletic and joined Real Madrid.