MADRID, 3 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The statue of tribute to the Athletic Club exporter José Ángel Iribar will be located at the foot of the San Mamés stadium, at the point of the esplanade that converges with Licenciado Poza street and adjacent to Luis Briñas street, the Basque club reported this Monday. .
The president of Athletic Club, Jon Uriarte, and the mayor of Bilbao, Juan Mari Aburto, accompanied by Iribar himself, publicly presented this Monday the exact location where the sculpture will be erected, which will receive athletic fans on the days of party.
The work will be carried out by the Basque company Alfa Arte, specialized in the materialization of sculptures, taking as reference two of the iconic photographs of ‘Txopo’ Iribar in which he appears posing dressed as a goalkeeper.
The patinated bronze statue will measure, to a slightly larger than life scale, 2 meters 10 centimeters tall, and will rest on a base just over a meter high. The date of the inauguration is not yet determined, but it will take place during the next season, before the end of 2023.
Aburto thanked Iribar for showing that “in Bilbao love for Athletic is not just a matter of fans, but a very deep identification with the values of sport”. “Those values of respect, camaraderie, desire to excel, equality, nobility, commitment and teamwork, which your generation was able to imprint forever on the character of Bilbao”, he indicated.
An emotional Iribar thanked the gesture and explained that he conceives the sculpture as “a recognition of all the players who have worn the Athletic shirt throughout its history”.
A wooden cube with the Athletic Club 125th anniversary logo has been placed in the approximate location of the future sculpture. In addition, a representation of the Lezama quarry, made up of about twenty young goalkeepers and goalkeepers from all the lower categories, has wrapped up Iribar.