The model club

However, he knows that the correct answer is probably the simplest. Navarra’s success is rooted in two things that are not mysteries at all: system and structure.

“There is a football culture in Navarre,” Alcalde said. “But it is a region with only one club: Osasuna. We work with 150 affiliated youth teams. We have 20,000 players in our lane. We have a very well developed scouting network. We look for talent under every stone.”

Of course Osasuna has no free rein with those players. Part of the reason why Navarre as a whole has proved so prolific over the years is that the big teams in the neighboring Basque Country – Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad – have long regarded the province’s players as fair game. More recently, Barcelona and Villarreal have also identified it as fertile ground.

Osasuna can’t pay as generously as all those teams. It certainly can’t match the glamor of Barcelona. What it can offer is a sure path from youth football to a professional career, from potential to fulfillment. “Our job is to generate a stream of players for the first team and make sure they are ready to jump from Disneyland to Jurassic Park,” said Alcalde. “If you want to become a player, I’m sure this is the best place to do it.”

However, he is well aware that most of the hopefuls who come under his care will fall by the wayside. “Becoming a player is complicated,” he said. “Very few make it.” To compensate, the emphasis at Tajonar, Osasuna’s youth academy, is as much on health, psychology and emotional development as it is on football. “We want to make sure the sport doesn’t harm them,” he said. “We don’t want to leave broken eggs on the road.”

There will be plenty of players on the field Saturday night that Alcalde and his staff could refer to as validation and justification, players with, if not a Navarra gene, then certainly what Alcalde calls ‘Tajonar DNA’.