SD EibarIn the summer of 2014 SD Eibar faced a problem that few clubs have had after winning promotion: the Spanish league required it to raise €1.7 million in share capital or be sent down to the third tier. The paradox was that Eibar was the only club in Spanish professional football without debt. The club opened a share issue to supporters from around the world, reached the required sum, and became one of the best-known examples of a small club that kept its independence. The episode summarises what Eibar stands for better than any trophy.
The club comes from Eibar, a town of fewer than 30,000 inhabitants in Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country, long associated with gunsmithing. This gave the team its nickname, Los Armeros (Armagiñak in Basque), the gunsmiths. The club was founded on 30 November 1940 through the merger of two local sides. Its blue and claret colours are linked, by tradition, to a Barcelona kit that the club received in the 1940s.
For most of the twentieth century Eibar was a lower-division club, spending long periods in the third tier. A turning point came under coach Gaizka Garitano, a former Eibar player. In 2012–13 the club won promotion to the Segunda División by beating L'Hospitalet 4–0 on aggregate in the play-off final. A year later it won the Segunda División with 71 points, two ahead of Deportivo La Coruña, and reached La Liga for the first time in its history. This was a rise from the third tier to the top flight in two seasons.
Its home is the Estadio Municipal de Ipurua, opened in 1947. The ground stands between hillsides and apartment blocks, with stands close to the pitch, and from 2014 to 2021 it was the smallest stadium in La Liga. Reaching the top flight forced the club to expand it in stages, which raised the capacity above 8,000 without closing the stadium. The proximity of the supporters to the pitch has long been seen as an advantage for the home side.
Eibar spent seven consecutive seasons in La Liga, from 2014 to 2021. The first, 2014–15, ended in 18th place with 35 points, level with Deportivo La Coruña and Granada, and the club kept its place only because another side was relegated administratively. After that Eibar settled in the division: it finished 14th in 2015–16, when it led the table for the first time in its history after a win at Granada, then 10th in 2016–17 with 54 points, ninth in 2017–18 with 51 points, its best finish, and 12th in 2018–19. The coach of that period was José Luis Mendilibar, who took over in 2016 after Garitano left for Deportivo. In 2016–17 Eibar earned a 1–1 draw at the Santiago Bernabéu against Real Madrid, the European champions, and in 2017 it reached the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey for the first time. The club was relegated in 2021. In 2021–22 it finished third in the Segunda División and lost in the promotion play-off semi-finals.
The management model behind this rise was shaped by president Alex Aranzábal, who led the club in its promotion period, and by Amaia Gorostiza, who succeeded him and later chaired the club. Ownership is spread among thousands of shareholders, none with controlling power, and the club has stressed financial prudence and the development of local players. Eibar has no European record to present, and its memorable nights are domestic ones: the promotion of 2014, the first top-flight season and the draw at the Bernabéu.
Today Eibar competes in the Segunda División, and its identity has changed little: a small town, a small stadium, a club that has repeatedly managed to compete with much larger rivals. In the history of Spanish football it is remembered less for trophies than for how a club of its size stayed independent in the top flight.