First Team Presentation

On the morning of 12 July, the Athletic Club first division team has held its official presentation in Lezama. Fernando Lamikiz, Jose Luis Mendilibar and Julen Guerrero have taken part in the speeches prior to the training session, emphasizing the following, among other things: the necessity to act responsibly, that we have demonstrated that with the reserve teams it is possible to be competitive with guarantees and that, besides being focused on the Liga, we should not be ruled out when it comes to obtaining good results in a K.O. tournament.

Later, President Fernando Lamikiz, after being asked by the media, has commented on the position of the club in the Iban Zubiaurre case. ‘Iban will end up playing for Athletic. He is part of Athletic and he wants to be with us. We reached an agreement with him as long as his contractual situation is resolved with Real and we honestly hope that everything is resolved quickly since, as we have repeated on several occasions, we must collaborate to standardize the world of football. What does surprise us is that there are people who have no problem if a player from Real ends up in Barcelona yet they do if he comes to Athletic’.

Fernando Lamikiz has wanted to finish by saying the following; ‘It would not be good either for Real nor for the player that he, Iban, spent one season without playing and that within a year he ends up joining Athletic. Of course we respect Real, but we hope that this situation is settled as soon as possible since it is not good for anyone’.