Throughout their 103-year history, CA Osasuna have punched above their weight. Coming from a city, Pamplona, of fewer than 200 000 people and surrounded by huge historical clubs in the Basque Country such as Athletic Club and Real Sociedad, they have had little choice. And given the meagre resources at their disposal, their achievements are admirable.
They have spent 41 seasons in LaLiga Santander and achieved eight top-10 finishes, their best being when they came fourth in 1990/91 and 2005/06. They also had memorable campaigns in knockout competitions, reaching the semifinals of the Uefa Cup in 2007 and Copa del Rey final in 2005 and again in 2023. They are a team on the rise again.
CA Osasuna’s success has been based on having a recognisable style of play, marked by intensity, physicality and desire. And key to maintaining that identity has been having a successful academy, producing players already moulded in the club's style. CA Osasuna have produced a host of brilliant players since the turn of the century, such as World Cup winner Javi Martínez, Champions League winner César Azpilicueta, LaLiga Santander winner Raúl García and players who have proved themselves in other leagues such as Nacho Monreal, Mikel Merino and Álex Berenguer.
But more recently their academy has started to produce quality players at a remarkable rate thanks to a clear strategy, called Tajonar 2017, which the club devised to build towards the future. The roots of Tajonar 2017 can be traced back to when the club suffered a painful relegation in 2014, ending 14 consecutive years in LaLiga Santander.
With debts of over 100 million euros accumulated by previous boards, the club was, according to Ángel Alcalde, head of youth development at CA Osasuna, facing “the biggest sporting and institutional crisis in our history”. Things almost got even worse the following year, when CA Osasuna were on the brink of relegation to Segunda División B, which Alcalde said would have “quite possibly led to the club disappearing”.
A turning point came when Javier Flaño scored in added time to secure a 2-2 draw at CE Sabadell which ensured survival. The goal was a lifeline to CA Osasuna and the following season, despite working with very limited resources, they returned to the top flight. “That gave the club a huge financial injection and we started breathing again and started to look forwards,” says Alcalde. “It was then that CA Osasuna built a project for its academy, which had fallen by the wayside in the years of crisis.”
Tajonar is the name of CA Osasuna’s academy and training ground and Alcalde has stated that the aim of the project, since renamed Método Tajonar (the Tajonar Method) was to make CA Osasuna's academy “a reference point once again on a national, European and global level”.
Alcalde conducted a thorough review of the academy structure and found there was no common goal or plan running through it. Something needed to change. He says: “In the first year I met with every coach in the academy and I realised everyone worked autonomously, there was no unified criteria. Now it's the total opposite. We have a strategy, all our coaches know it like the back of their hand and work on it each day.”
Producing players at CA Osasuna is no easy task but getting them to stay at the club has proved even harder. The club got used to seeing their local players end their education elsewhere, such as Javier Martínez, who moved from CA Osasuna to Athletic Club aged 17. Mikel Merino enjoyed two seasons with the first team before moving to Borussia Dortmund.
But things have changed dramatically in the last few years. Now, many members of Jagoba Arrasate’s squad have passed through the doors of Tajonar, among them David García, Jon Moncayola, Kike Barja, Unai García, Aimar Oroz and Diego Moreno.
“We want players to choose to stay at CA Osasuna even when they have better financial offers elsewhere,” Alcalde explains. “We want our players and families to believe that, on a sporting level, CA Osasuna is the best place to grow and become a professional footballer. We were very clear that we wanted to do that and we have achieved that, the numbers prove it.”
Former CA Osasuna captain Patxi Puñal, who joined the club’s academy aged nine and spent his entire professional career there until retiring at the age of 38, is responsible for the academy’s methodology and management of talent. Puñal has a tough task of working in a relatively small catchment area of 650 000 inhabitants in the province of Navarre, where Athletic Club and Real Sociedad also operate.
But the club have employed a vast network to ensure they spot the most talented youngsters early and can bring them into Tajonar. They work with approximately 150 feeder clubs, meaning they have some 20 000 players in their orbit. Each season they take on 700 new players, working with 300 of them every week across seven centres of excellence, where the club employ more than 20 coaches.
As CA Osasuna's longest-serving player, Puñal is as qualified as anyone to ensure the club's youngsters are taught the ways of the club. He and his team drew up a manual outlining key, non-negotiable elements players need to work by: tactical identity, proactivity, versatility and responsibility.
Alcalde adds: “These are CA Osasuna values and they're reflected in our players such as David García, Unai García and Jon Moncayola. They are reliable players who week after week contribute a lot and who you can always count on.”
A sign that this new generation truly believes in what the club are doing came when Moncayola, now 24, took the unprecedented step of signing a 10-year contract, tying him to the club until 2031, when he will be 32. “Jon Moncayola is a perfect example of what it's like to come through the CA Osasuna academy,” says Alcalde. “CA Osasuna made him an offer and he said yes to CA Osasuna for 10 years. We are delighted and super proud that one of our academy players has put his faith in CA Osasuna.”
While the success of Método Tajonar owes a lot to careful planning and talent identification, the club believe they will be able to do even more with their youth academy thanks to the help of CVC’s investment in Spanish football via the Boost LaLiga initiative, which has injected €1.9 billion into clubs to help with infrastructure projects.
The investment will allow the club to double the amount of grass training pitches at Tajonar and build a 4 000-capacity stadium for the reserve team and women’s team to play at. Crucially, the club will also be able to buy back land it was forced to sell to the local government due to their financial problems. Alcalde says: “We are delighted with the CVC project because the better our facilities are, the better we can develop our players. Tajonar is 40 years old and there are aspects of it that could be improved. The CVC deal is an important boost as it will allow us to make advances with our facilities.”
But most exciting of all is the work that is taking place on the pitch each week, as fans continue to identify with a team largely comprised of homegrown players who have come through Tajonar. As Alcalde points out: “We are seeing something now which we struggled to do in the past. Lately, CA Osasuna has been able to hold on to top players, who came through our academy and decided to stay here. The path has already been drawn out. It’s very satisfying to see CA Osasuna play with so many academy players in the team.”
Puñal concludes: “We cannot imagine CA Osasuna as a club without a strong block of homegrown players, because our fans would not identify with that. It's not better or worse than any other club but that’s how we are.”