With the start of the new La Liga season little over a week away, Athletic Club Bilbao are ready to complete the move to their new San Mamés Stadium, which is set to be completed in the next fortnight. Athletic played their first games at the new stadium last season but it is now readying completion, and fans are pleased that the legendary but oudated San Mamés has been given such a beautiful replacement.
The old stadium, known to fans across Spain as 'the Cathedral' was arguably one of the finest football stadiums in the world, and there were certainly tears shed when it was announced that Athletic would be upping sticks and leaving. 
However, they haven't moved very far (right). The new stadium has been built almost directly on the site of the old one, and the final stand was not completed until the old stadium was removed. Home is where the heart is, and the heart of this club has remained where its home truly is. Sandwiched between the North Stand of the old stadium and the Nevrion River, Athletic's vociferious supporters' weekly pilgrimage has not been hugely altered.
Designed by architect César Azkarate, the new build will have a capacity of over 53,000, an increase on the 40,000 of the old stadium first built in 1913. It apparently draws inspiration from the stadium developments of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and has been designed in such a way that the capacity can be raised to 56,000 if necessary. One of the conditions which guaranteed €50million worth of funding from the Basque Regional Government was that community facilities must be incorporated into the design, meaning that the development also contains an indoor training arena for athletics track and field, a sports science facility and municipal sports centre, office space, bars, retail outlets, a club shop and a club museum.
While the stadium may be changing in Bilbao, the most important things will always stay the same - former manager Marcelo Bielsa said of the atmosphere created by Athletic's support that "it is one thing to be told, and another to experience it". With the addition of 13,000 more fans packed into the ground with a season of Champions League football ahead of them, the demolition of the old San Mamés need not be the end of an era, but the beginning of a new dawn.