The Board of directors will submit its resignation

Athletic Club’s Board of directors has decided, in the meeting held Friday, 25 June, to submit its resignation which will take effect on the first days of July. The measure adopted today supposes the celebration of elections to the Presidency of the Club that will take place, in agreement with the Statutes, in the first fortnight of September.

The decision to bring forward the elections is motivated by the fact that the Board of directors understands that the project that former-president Javier Uria initiated three years ago has reached its aim, after having fulfilled, in a percentage superior to 90 percent, the electoral program and, in addition, that it is the most opportune moment to guarantee the stability of the Club. Likewise, it is predicted that at the end of July the official call for elections to the Presidency of the Club will take place and that, in the middle of August, the opening and conclusion of the term of presentation of the different candidates, whereas at the end of August, the official proclamation of the nominations will be made.

The President of Athletic Club, Ignacio Ugartetxe, has taken advantage of the board of directors meeting to explain that he will not run as a candidate in the elections.

Ignacio Ugartetxe makes special emphasis in ‘the dynamics of work imposed from the first moment, in which the efforts and results have been redoubled during the last year, allows for the decision to be made, at the right moment, to summon the elections for next September’.

Assumption of responsibilities

Also, the president emphasized that ‘for the sake of the necessary stability of the Club we decided, after the tragic disappearance of Javier Uria, to assume his initiatives, his illusions and hopes that, after all, were also ours. We had to continue the work initiated until taking it to good port, because we thought that, only this way, we could lay the foundations with which to construct the future of our Club. We knew that this decision would not be free of difficulties, but, today, we can feel very proud of the work done ‘.

Sport success

At another moment of the meeting, the chief executive of the Club affirmed that ‘after an unrelenting effort that has counted with the support and unconditional collaboration of all of you, we can present a positive balance that counts among its results, at sports level, with the classification to dispute the next edition of the UEFA Cup or with the attainment for the second consecutive year of the Women’s Superliga, without forgetting the Basque Federation Cup and the other successes by the lower category teams’.

‘I believe, nevertheless, that these are not the most important successes that we have harvested. Our most important triumph, that of the whole red-and-white family, has been to be able to lay the foundations to guarantee the future viability of the Club while we deepened in a sport philosophy that has made us great: to believe in ourselves as intrinsic and matchless, as added value to more than a century of history ‘.

Positive final balance

The balance made by Ugartetxe is positive. In this line, he indicated that ‘we have deepened in the reserve of players philosophy and the players come from Lezama; we have taken firm steps in the beginning of financial criteria that allow us to confront the future with guarantees as opposed to the shaded doubt that blossom on the world of football; the Athletic Club Foundation has been consolidated; the DENA project has been created, a hopeful reality whose objective is to assure the bases from which the Club is nourished, thus guaranteeing its continuity and its future sport successes and the Athletic Club mark has been optimized as an additional source of income ‘.

Professional management

With regards to management, the president emphasized that ‘the Club has improved in its professional business by means of the creation of the Sports Direction, responsible for the mainly sports matters; the External Relations Direction, ordered to improve the attention to members, Supporters’ Clubs and followers alike; the Marketing Department, which was born with the objective to increase the resources of the Club by means of the search for new alternative income, and the beginning of the Economic Commission, ordered to rationalize and optimize expenses. In addition, innovative systems of information have been implanted which have turned us in the first football club in obtaining the Quality ISO 9000 certificate to integral management and the UEFA license’.

Hopeful inheritance

The final closing of his speech revolved around the inheritance which they leave to the next board of directors, to which Ugartetxe referred to as ‘a far better inheritance than we received: a stronger and more authentic Athletic, more rooted in its reason for being, participative, honest and rigorous; really, a time of deserved sport and economic successes. I believe that this attainment connects with what has been the tradition from the Boards of directors in our Club and I am convinced, also, that it will remain as such with future ones’.

Misión Accomplished

Ignacio Ugartetxe finally considered that ‘once the conviction is reached, by means of a deep and meditated present situation analysis of the Club, and after having advanced very significantly in the objective of budgetary stability and the sport success of the same, together with my personal family circumstances, I have taken, with integrity and honesty, the decision to finish my mandate having fulfilled my duties. From now on, I will continue going to San Mamés as a member of Athletic, where I hope to enjoy, for many years, new sports successes of our dear Club ‘.