What Aymeric Laporte’s departure tells us about Athletic Club Bilbao

When any football club pays a record transfer fee, it’s a big deal. When that club is Manchester City, it has to be an eye-watering deal: the kind of number you use when you decide halfway through a sentence to exaggerate something.

Fifty-seven million pounds.

What Islington Council proposed to spend on new council homes in a recent budget announcement. The total for nine development funding bids submitted in Kent last year to build 6,373 new houses. The price paid for the most expensive diamond ever to be sold at auction.

The amount Manchester City will deposit in Athletic Club Bilbao’s bank account to acquire their 23-year-old centre-back, Aymeric Laporte.

It’s easy to draw a contrast between the resources available to Manchester City and those of other clubs. The end result is often a squabble on social media between two fans who have never watched their team play live, or who have been priced out of that privilege. It’s a depressing spectacle: arguments between people who can never decide whether they want their club to go wild in the aisles with oil millions or assume the moral high ground by succeeding despite their rivals’ disgustingly lavish spending.

This is one of many things drawing me ever closer to the club Laporte is leaving: Athletic Club Bilbao. I’ll never have the Basque blood or roots they treasure, nor the in-built desire and desperation of a lifelong supporter but the level of interest, the wish to see them succeed, the appreciation of their approach: all of that is growing by the day.

The contrast between Athletic Club and Manchester City is vast, of course. Laporte’s arrival at the Etihad is the latest move in Pep Guardiola’s re-shaping of the City defence, which started with the signings of full-backs Kyle Walker, Danilo and Benjamin Mendy for a combined fee in the region of £125million. Athletic Club haven’t signed a single player since August 2015, a clock that will reset on 1st July when they sign their own pair of full-backs, Ander Capa and Cristian Ganea, for a total of around £3.5million. That would cover a few months of one leading Manchester City player’s wages.

Yet there is no real meltdown in Bilbao over the loss of such a talented player. Laporte will be missed but the majority of Athletic Club fans appear to trust in their centre-backs, especially the impressive youngster Unai Núñez and Yeray Álvarez, who has recently returned to the first team after beating cancer for a second time.

Athletic Club’s philosophy means their options are limited. Iñigo Martínez is a rare, seemingly ready-made replacement for Laporte with a release clause price set at 32 million euros, but the prospect of signing the Real Sociedad defender hasn’t been met with universal approval among Athletic fans. They trust in Unai and Yeray and they trust in their world-class youth academy to produce more talent given the opportunities available when you don’t dip into the transfer market at the first sign of trouble. Whether Martínez arrives or not, the instinct is not to panic.

There has also been no meltdown directed at Laporte, who has struggled to convince the France manager Didier Deschamps while in Bilbao. Laporte chose to stay with Athletic eighteen months ago and now feels he is ready to continue his development under Guardiola. It’s understandable.

Athletic fans have spent the past few months fretting over the potential exit of Kepa Arrizabalaga, one of the most exciting young goalkeeping prospects in Europe. In the end, Kepa tired of waiting for Real Madrid and decided to stay with his boyhood club. His decision softened the subsequent loss of Laporte.

The departing defender left Athletic fans with an emotional message:

“So much to tell in a few lines…

I want to thank you all for everything you have given to me. I arrived as a teenager and here I have grown up as a person and as a football player. My farewell, facing a new challenge in my professional career, I don’t want it to be a goodbye but a see you soon. Here I leave a unique club, different and that I will never forget.

For all this, thank you.”

On first glance, to outsiders, Athletic Club seem to have made life unnecessarily complicated for themselves by employing a transfer policy that puts them at a competitive disadvantage. On closer inspection, the simplicity of the approach shines through: the level-headedness, the concentration on football, the long-term planning.

Athletic Club Bilbao are the big club that have chosen to be great. For Aymeric Laporte, greatness is there to be gained.