Sestao River Club: Flowing football in the Basque Country

Words: Dave Harry

Images: Dave Harry

“Sestao, Sestao, Sestao, we the people cutting the estuary

Who are right next to you, have come to cheer you on.”

The Estuary of Bilbao is the artery of the region, the rivers Nervion, Ibaizabal and Cadagua meet there and it links the Biscay to the Alava.

It may not be quite the industrial heartland it once was but the docks still move cargo and the Sestao Steel Works provide a core commodity.

A mile inland, ascending up a steep hill and through typically urban terrain, the floodlights of Las Llanas stand as tall and as proud as the supporters of the Verdinegros (the Green-Blacks) do.

Welcome to Sestao River Club.

“Your green and black colours are the emblem of Sestao,
the team from Vizcaya is very close to Bilbao.”

©Dave Harry/ Terrace Edition. Sestao River Club.

The current Athletic Club manager Ernesto Valverde played for Sestao in the 80’s as did his assistant Jon Aspiazu so the links with the Basque giants of San Mames are there.

However, in some respects, Sestao feels a world away from Bilbao and Athletic Club.

If Athletic's San Memes stadium is a modern cathedral oozing the best of the modern game, Sestao's home Las Llanas has a charm and an earthy beauty you can only find in the lower leagues.

Hemmed in between apartment blocks, bars and a church with a graveyard, its mixture of stands and green and black painted terracing give it the ingredients of an archetypal traditional football ground.

Whilst the Spain 82 World Cup commissioned a number Spanish artists to paint posters for each host city (Eduardo Chillida painted a typically abstract image for Bilbao), Las Llanas looks more like Lowry’s ‘The Football Match’ painting than a Miro or an Arroyo.

And Sestao, a small town with a population of under 30,000, would’ve suited Lowry’s aesthetic as well, its industry and compact streets would quite easily have graced other paintings of his.

It is firmly a local place where people support each other and Sestao River Club is one of its most potent symbols.

Originally formed in 1916 as Sestao Sport, the club spent most of its years in the second, third and fourth levels of the Spanish league system, but on its 70th anniversary the clubs debts had spiralled to a level they couldn’t sustain and they folded. Kind of.

‘Algo mas que el orgullo de un pueblo' (‘Something more than the pride of a town’) is the club motto and it feels that way.

The town of Sestao rallied around its club and it was reborn as Sestao River Club.

The moniker ‘River’ was chosen to show the connection between the club and its fans; 'River' is what the fans had long called the side in homage to the River Plate side of the late 1940s that toured the region.

In-keeping with other reborn clubs, Sestao fought their way up through the divisions and despite the odd relegation along the way, they play in the third tier again today.

The supporters – the ‘Old Firm’ – are noisy, passionate and provide their team wonderful backing.

If its common in other parts of the region to see Athletic memorabilia alongside that of the local club in the bars and even being worn among the fans at the ground, you don’t really get that here – it’s only the red on the Basque flag that penetrates their pride in the colours of Verdinegros.

“Sestao, Sestao, Sestao, please don't give up,

because singing together you will be the champion.”

They chant the club anthem. It fits.

This is a town and they are the fans, that didn’t give up on its side – Athletic is only six miles away and it would have been easy to have just gone there instead, but that pride, that love, that special thing you can only get when watching your local club with the people you spend your life with, well why would you want to change?

The financial challenges of sustaining a club in La Liga 2 means it is possible they may never return to the heights of the second level as their original club did, but does that matter?

Relegations and promotions happen, 99% of clubs have a ceiling they can’t go above but as most fans know that's an irrelevance, the joy is in the club itself and all that it represents.

That is Sestao.