Three candidates are looking for the seat of the Ibaigane Palace, the headquarters of the Athletic Club, the former residence of the Sota family, nationalist and influential, seized as a military government site during the Franco regime, and rebuilt by the red and white entity after years of neglect.
There, among stuccoed ceilings, Venetian floors and red marble, Ricardo Barkala (Portugalete, 66 years old), Iñaki Arechabaleta (Bilbao, 63 years old) and Jon Uriarte (Bilbao, 43 years old) want to work.
Only one will be able to reach the chair after the members of Athletic cast their vote, in the ballot boxes placed on the San Mamés field.
“It is a thoughtful decision, although it is true that it breaks your schemes,” says Barkala.
“It changes everything, because Athletic is passion.
We gather a series of people who are convinced that football is at a crossroads, changing by leaps and bounds.
We understood that we could develop a project that could benefit Athletic”, confirms the oldest candidate, also the one who previously decided on his presence, and who will leave the management of the Port of Bilbao if he gets the endorsement of the partners.
Meanwhile, Arechabaleta, attached to the CEO of the communication group Vocento, plans to retire if he is elected.
And he is convinced: "I think we have brought together some great names like Bielsa's, a great project, very professional, very fresh, without ties."
He refers to the fact that “it is made up of people without any background within Athletic, because that sometimes makes you not be free in decisions.
I believe that the sum of all these issues is what I believe will make us win the elections”.
More information
Athletic will decide on Friday between Bielsa or Valverde as coach
The youngest is Uriarte, a successful entrepreneur, now linked to the real estate business after selling the ticket resale platform
Ticketbis
for 147 million euros.
He also believes that he will win, “because Athletic needs a change, a transformation.
We have some very strong foundations but some negative energies and if we don't make these changes we can have problems,” he says.
“The future of the club is in danger.
And the team that surrounds me are the ideal people to carry out this transformation process”.
For many reasons.
We are fully qualified by the professional careers we have had in different fields, because we are in an age and conditions of total energy, and because we are independent.
We put ourselves, nobody puts us, there is nobody in the shadow.
We are what you see."
It will be a titanic fight, that of the polls.
Nobody dares to give a favorite, despite the fact that Uriarte got more endorsements.
It is difficult to compare the elections with previous ones, and the names presented by each candidate may be the key.
Arechabaleta walks with Bielsa: "He is not the same as when he first arrived in Europe," says the candidate.
“After all his experience at Athletic, in France and England, he has matured, he is a much better coach and he is surely in the top five in the world”.
Arechabaleta recounts that of his coach, "he attracts a lot of attention, how he has reduced training time, how he now makes them much more enjoyable, but that evolution also occurs in the human."
The other two candidates share Ernesto Valverde, another sure bet at Athletic: "For a long time we have thought that he is the ideal coach for Athletic," says Uriarte.
"The connection with Ernesto was immediate and I have known him for a long time, since before the elections."
However, the announcement was late.
He did it at the same time as Barkala, because the coach himself requested it.
“We have said it now because it was time now”, confesses the candidate: “I spoke with several technicians, six or seven, and one of them was Ernesto and we decided on him seeing the project because it fits like a glove”.
In this project, the sports director will be Ramón Planes, with a past in Barcelona, Tottenham, but also in Dimitri Piterman's Alavés.
For Arechabaleta, that position will be occupied by Óscar Perarnau, with 22 years of experience at Espanyol, although with a low profile before the imposing figure of Bielsa.
In the case of Uriarte, the sports director lasted very little.
Carlos Aviña, his candidate, had to drop because of a scandal on social networks.
Little was said about Lezama in the gatherings;
of the club's economy, the essential.
The campaign got muddy at times and there were no debates at three.
Nobody knows who will win.
It is decided by the 40,257 members with the right to vote, although in the last elections, in 2018, only 19,060 participated, less than 50%.
You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on
and
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
.