Lezama, it is convenient to start here, is not (only) a sports training center, but a town of 2,500 inhabitants made up of a small urban center and dozens of hamlets scattered around it.

To access what the world of football knows as Lezama, Athletic's sports city, you have to immerse yourself in a small road that serves a good number of single-family homes.

When it is time to turn right to enter the rojiblanca property, you have to trust that no car is coming from the opposite direction.

If so, someone will have to back out of the intersection.

Parking at the cider house directly opposite is another option.

Going on the bus that travels leisurely throughout the Txorierri valley or on the slow train that stops 10 minutes from the entrance that connects with the Old Quarter of Bilbao complete the variant of alternatives.

In these rural lands, sometimes difficult to expand, since the owners of neighboring farms more than once tried to abuse their position to sell them for exaggerated fortunes, the future of Athletic is being built.

In a way, also that of Spanish football.

And he has done it for 50 years, fulfilled and celebrated last Wednesday.

There was no claim then to create a high-performance center, but simply to respond to a logistical need.

The growth of industrial Bilbao was leaving the city without football fields and the grass of old San Mamés no longer supported the daily load.

It was necessary to find a location outside,

Piru Gaínza

insisted on it and the

Félix Oraá

board of directors

ended up opting for buying some land in the wild Lezama.

"I came here at the age of 12 and now I'm 62. It's my home," says

Santi Urkiaga

, who was the first player trained in Lezama to make his debut with the first team, then double league champion and responsible for the facilities for years.

During these years, it has gone from three fields and a building for everything to eight playing fields and, in recent days, two buildings, one for the exclusive use of the men's first team.

"Athletic would not have been able to maintain its level in these 50 years without Lezama," claims

José Ángel Iribar

, present at Athletic's first training session there on January 27, 1971 and almost every day of the week, in some functions or others, in this half century.

The splendor of the 80s, with two leagues, served to confirm the success of the bet.

"Before we each played in our neighborhood, on the street. Lezama allowed us to train from youngsters in suitable conditions for our training and form a group that bears fruit a decade later with optimal results", analyzes Urkiaga, who remembers the sacrifices that children make. as he had to do in the 70s: "The journeys were long and there were days when he came home at midnight. And he didn't like it too much, of course".

Live again in Lezama

The production of top-level footballers has been continuous during these decades: Argote, Goikoetxea, Sarabia, Salinas, Andrinua, Alkorta, Guerrero, Llorente -the only world champion to come out of Lezama-, Iraola, Muniain, Laporte, Kepa, Williams, Simón ... Of the 26 players that make up Athletic's current squad, 22 have passed through Lezama: all except Iñigo Martínez, Raúl García, Dani García and Balenziaga.

Four of them have only played for Bilbao Athletic, the first subsidiary, but 17 entered the youth team or earlier.

Núñez, Capa, Vicente and Zarraga arrived in Lezama when they were 10 years old.

In the first women's team, there are already 15 youth squads.

Several of them - and of them - lived in a residence in Derio, a few kilometers away.

As of next year, these promising youngsters will live in Lezama again, as in the beginning, when Athletic completes the work it already has underway to expand its main building.

On one side or another, what is relevant is that Lezama goes beyond football.

"I came from Pamplona when I was 12, leaving my family and friends there. And there are very hard times, of course, but there were always people to assist us," explains Muniain, the captain who raised the Spanish Super Cup two weeks ago to confirm that Lezama, infinite, continues to function 50 years later.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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