Overview
Club Deportivo Basconia is a Spanish football club based in Basauri, Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country. Founded on 14 March 1913, it currently plays in , holding home games at Estadio de López Cortázar, with an 8,500-seat capacity. In 1997, they entered into a partnership with Athletic Bilbao to serve as a feeder club for Bilbao and essentially operate as the club's C team.
History
Founded in 1913 and named after a (later owned by the Altos Hornos de Vizcaya company), Basconia reached the national third level (Tercera División) thirty years later. The club played in the second tier for six seasons (1957–63), but this was before the creation of the regionalised new third division in the 1970s.
In 1997, Basconia became Basque neighbours Athletic Bilbao's feeder club, not being eligible for promotion if the reserves, Bilbao Athletic, playing in the level above, did not attain the same goal. The primary function of the agreement is to aid the development of young players in a challenging environment while remaining in the same group under the close guidance of the parent club; a number of teenagers who spent a season at Basconia became professionals at Athletic Bilbao, eventually playing in La Liga and UEFA competitions. In January 2020 it was confirmed that the partnership, due to expire that summer, had been renewed for another three years to 2023.
Basconia's place in Athletic's club structure means that the squad changes greatly each season. About half of the players move up to play for Bilbao Athletic, or go out on loan to other local clubs playing at Segunda División B level. They are replaced by graduates, usually 17 or 18 years old, from the previous year's Juvenil A team. The squad is normally expanded further with new signings from the regions's youth clubs, most notably Danok Bat and Antiguoko.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).