Former Athletic footballers Rafa Viteri and Juanan López die

The former Athletic Club footballers Rafa Viteri, Cup champion in 1973, and Juanan López, who also won the trophy in 1958, have died at the age of 73 and 91, respectively, the Basque club has announced.

Viteri, who died on Saturday in Logroño, trained in Lezama in the youth team, with which he won the Cup in the 1969-70 campaign. Furthermore, the Bilbao striker scored more than thirty goals with the reserve team before moving up to the first team.

He only played one season, 14 games, in the First Division, but he managed to score in his debut in Valencia and also in his debut in San Mamés against Real Oviedo, against whom he scored a double. He also scored another goal during the visit to Atlético de Madrid. In that season, 1973, they celebrated the Cup title after the ‘lions’ beat CD Castellón in the final.

He was transferred to Burgos and there he became a team legend, scoring 33 goals in the seven seasons in which he played at El Plantío, coinciding on the field with Juanito, who would later sign for Real Madrid. In the 1975-76 season he was the team’s top scorer, helping it to promotion to the First Division.

For his part, Juanan López died on Friday in Tenerife at the age of 91. The goalkeeper from Irún played eleven games for Athletic Club between 1957 and 1962 and was the substitute goalkeeper in the historic Cup victory of the ‘Once Aldeanos’ in 1958 against Real Madrid.

In that feat, López, as he was known, was Carmelo Cedrún’s substitute. Later, he would leave the club with the arrival of José Ángel Iribar. He played five seasons in Athletic’s first team, after two years at Deportivo Alavés.

Later, he played two more seasons with RCD Espanyol, with promotion to First Division included, and he played three more years for Recreativo de Huelva, where he left football active. “After that, he settled down to live in Tenerife, where he served as a red-and-white ambassador for almost six decades, as we saw in our last visit of the first team to the island, in the Cup,” the club noted.

Athletic Club sent its “deepest condolences to the family and loved ones” of both players, and announced that its players will wear a black armband in their memory when visiting CA Osasuna in the LaLiga EA Sports match.