Only four clubs have been crowned champions of Spain eight or more times. Real Madrid and Barcelona are the dominant pair, but Atletico Madrid have broken that duopoly twice in recent times, while Athletic Club have been more successful than every other side in the country.
This season, only six points separate them as the top four in La Ligas developing title race, with Atletico and Athletic going head-to-head at Riyadh Air Metropolitano on Saturday night.
Athletics chances of claiming a shock first Spanish title since 1984 are slim, but victory in the capital would at least keep them firmly in the mix and well on course to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in 11 years. However, a win the other way, for Atletico, would all but eliminate the Bilbao side from the title race and leave it a three-way fight moving towards the run-in.
There is an enormous amount at stake. But this isnt just a story about two clubs locked in a competitive rivalry this season. Their history is fundamentally linked and stretches back well over than a century.
Have you ever wondered why these two clubs have similar names and colours? There is a reason.
Bilbao was a prime location for one of the oldest football clubs in Spain to spring up in 1898. The game arrived from Great Britain in the latter portion of the 19th century, typically the domain of English or Scottish immigrants, or local students returning home, and prevalent more so in port cities in the north, west and south, like Bilbao, Vigo and Huelva. The latter indeed boasts Spains oldest official football club Recreativo de Huelva, once of La Liga founded in 1889.
Juan Astorquia had studied in Manchester and, upon returning home was one of seven founder members of what became Athletic Club the Anglicised name a nod to the original English influence that remains almost 130 years later. Only briefly was it Atletico under the oppressive Franco regime.
In its infancy, football grew when people who knew and loved the game took it with them to other places. So when three students from Bilbao living in Madrid, having just witnessed Athletic Club win the Copa del Rey of 1903 in the capital mere weeks earlier, decided to create their own club inspired their home town, Athletic Club Madrid was born.
Today, we obviously know the team as Atletico Madrid. It only changed from Athletic 37 years later when, in 1940, dictator General Franco banned foreign language in club names. But where Athletic Club reverted to their origins when the regime ended in 1975, Atletico Madrid stuck.
At its very core, Atletico started as the Madrid branch of Athletic Club. But although the teams drifted apart once Spanish football became more formalised into the 1920s, with the eventual foundation of La Liga in 1929, their famous colours will always be a symbol of that shared story.
The original colours of Athletic Club, and then Atletico by extension, were blue and white, with kits donated by Bilbao resident Juan Moser in 1902. Athletic went in search of replacement blue and white-halved shirts seven years later, hoping that player and board member Juan Elorduy would be able to purchase jerseys in the style of leading English club Blackburn Rovers on a 1909 trip abroad.
Elorduy was unsuccessful in sourcing the kits his brief outlined. But upon arriving in Southampton ready to board a ferry back home to Bilbao, it struck him that the local football club wore shirts red and white stripes that matched the colours on the flag of his home city.
Before sailing home, Elorduy managed to buy 50 red and white shirts, half of which were sent to the sister club in Madrid upon landing back in Spain. But, one final thing. Athletic opted for new black shorts at that point, while Atletico kept the same blue ones they had worn before, which explains the subtle difference in their respective strips that still exists today.
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