Osasuna Real Madrid

Trading in trust: How Osasuna went from the brink of disappearance to a Copa del Rey final against Real Madrid

“Being an Osasunista has always made me emotional. I try not to be, but it is what it is. It’s not theatre. That’s just how it comes out.” Those are the words of Osasuna President Luis Sabalza, who has just presented the logistical details for the Copa del Rey final. He’s jovial now, hearty, and full of smiles for cameras and people alike. Yet there was a moment during the event, when the unassuming 75-year-old’s voice broke. His eyes glistened, his pause was pregnant.

That moment is when he recalls Osasuna’s trip to Sabadell in Segunda just under eight years ago. Two goals down on the final day of the season, defeat meant relegation and Osasuna could see their own shadow disappearing, as the threat of liquidation became not just a nightmare, but one with a counting clock – until an 89th minute Javier Flano equaliser granted Los Rojillo salvation.

It’s not at the start of their Copa del Rey run that they cast back to, when they think of the beginning of their journey, but that day in 2015. The name of their campaign for the final owes its origin to the late, great Michael Robinson, former Liverpool and Osasuna forward, who blessed so much of Spanish football with his insight, as Sabalza explains.

“The campaign is called ‘a question of spirit’. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful phrases that has ever been said about Osasuna, it was Michael Robinson that said, what is Osasuna? ‘Spirit, spirit and more spirit.’ He had this appreciation of what Osasuna is, and he gave us this phrase that identifies us as a club, because it is the spirit, that makes us different.”

And while Sabalza can undoubtedly claim to be the authority on the topic, the inside view Football España gleans from two days in and around the club, is that it sells this Osasuna short.

Tucked away in the Navarran greenery, just 200,000 call Pamplona home, and every second week over 10% of them flock to the 23,576-seater El Sadar stadium, and one of the most consistent teams in Spain. They know exactly what they are getting from their side, which has finished 10th, 11th, 10th and currently sit 9th.

“The most important thing for me is the personality,” explains Sporting Director Braulio Vazquez, who is not short of it himself. “Here the people, if you watch our games, the people do not forgive not running. They value players that put in the effort, that fight a lot, that work.”

Braulio has been in charge for six years, and it was he who appointed manager Jagoba Arrasate. Only Diego Simeone has been in managing longer in La Liga. Like Simeone, he tends to compete above his station, with an Osasuna that have the 13th-largest salary limit of €52m. Even after three seasons in the top division, that’s just €10m more than the lowest (Elche), and a chasm of €631m removed from Real Madrid. Their opponents in the Copa del Rey final can call on 13 times their resources.

The Galacticos moniker is rarely levelled at 14-time Champions League-winners these days, but when it comes to cold hard cash, the gap remains astronomical. For Osasuna though, the important distance is between the club that toyed with defeat in Sabadell, and that which will take 25,000 fans to Seville.

“When I took the club, it was in a very bad place,” says Sabalza, something of an understatement. A year before Sabalza arrived, the electric company arrived outside the ground and unplugged the electricity – the bills hadn’t been paid in months.

Six months passed before Sabalza came to power, but that word gives very little sense of what he must have felt when he realised that the ship was not just sinking, but it was on the verge of capsizing entirely. For months, Sabalza would max out his personal credit cards in order to cover costs. Bread for today, hunger for tomorrow is the Spanish idiom for poor planning, and Osasuna weren’t even left with that. Sabalza was borrowing money from other directors in order to get the groceries in.

General Director Francisco Canal is a man of more words than his boss, but neither does he mince them. Dressed in sharp business attire, he suits his grey hairs, and speaks with a confidence that leaves little need for embellishment.

“They were crazy times. And it left us with brutal debts that nearly made the club disappear. So you don’t get there by throwing the house out of the window [or the kitchen sink at it], you get there by doing a methodical and organised job, which has allowed us to get here.”

Neither has it been straight and steady on the way to this point either. Osasuna rode the crest of a wave the year after Sabadell, finishing 6th and winning promotion to La Liga via the playoffs. They continued with their austerity and came straight back down with just 22 points. Discontent mushroomed, and Sabalza was forced to resign in March, with fans failing to understand such a small total.

“We had a difficult decision, do we invest all of the money we have in putting together a very powerful team in La Liga, or do we put together a team that will compete, risk an almost certain relegation, but save enough money to pay almost all of the debts?” Canal explains. “We had to call elections in March because the team didn’t have any chance of surviving. But, it was a decision that with the passing of time, turned out to be the best one.”

“We knew we had to take a risky decision, spending that €20m, or a significant part of it, but we knew it did not guarantee survival.”

Call it caprice, others prefer fortune, or maybe it’s merely timing. Rarely does success come without some element of it though, and here perhaps is where the clouds cleared and divine intervention shone through. Two other candidates ran in the elections, but neither made it to a vote due to irregularities with their bank guarantee, paving the way for Sabalza continue now with reinforced foundations.

When Osasuna made it to the final, there was one video plastered across every Spanish football outlet. A scene from the depths of winter in Pamplona in 2020; Osasuna were again in gruesome form, hanging around the ticket office for an express trip back to Segunda. It was Braulio who, with Osasuna in 19th place and 13 games without a win, called a press conference to tell them that no matter what happened, it happened with Arrasate at the helm. “I’m viral now,” laughs Braulio when it is brought up.

“I spoke about it with the President, because I was very clear,” Braulio says, eyes impenetrable. “My telephone didn’t stop ringing with agents offering me managers, so I went to the President and I said, I am going to say this. But if I do, I need everyone to know that if we go out on Sunday and we lose, we have to make sure it is very clear that if we go to Segunda, we go with Jagoba. Because I am not going to do it [sack him]. So if you’re getting rid of Jagoba, you’re getting rid of me.”

If perhaps Osasuna had the fortune of stability with Sabalza, they seized upon it thereafter. Elite football is not short of hard-working individuals, but if there is something that makes Osasuna different beyond their spirit, it is a simple but seldom quality – trust.

After Osasuna finished 9th in Segunda in Braulio’s first year, he remained. Canal has retained Sabalza’s trust throughout his reign, and Arrasate has been through a dip in form few managers see the other side of. How many people put their own job on the line for others? Listening to these figures, talking to the fans, there is obvious delight at the results, and a pride at the position of their club. And while trying to resist the seductive air of a Copa final floating around, a tint that makes everything look a little more beautiful, it would be unfair to omit the nobility of their eight-year journey. That trust does make them different, right up to the fans booming out songs at El Sadar after the final whistle, victory, draw or defeat.

“It’s a bit to do with the people of Navarra themselves, the people are hard-working, working-class, and the good thing about here is that when problems arrive we unite ourselves more,” ruminates Braulio. He has admitted his friendship with Arrasate contains considerable depth, pointing out that it would be “twice as difficult” if he had to sack him, but it allows them both to voice their opinions without fear of reprisal. Maybe those are both advantages.

“The president is key because he gives us complete confidence. That allows you to work in peace. He gets involved in the numbers, but he’s very straightforward, he is very affable, he lets us work.”

“We have a professional structure,” echoes Canal. “The President trusts the structure, the day he doesn’t trust us then we will go, that’s fine, but it has given us continuity.”

It’s a philosophy, conscious or not, that has been extended to both players and fans, those who are most vulnerable to exploitation. Every single Osasuna member has been guaranteed a ticket to the final.

“It’s a way of saying ‘look, you are a member, you have been here, you have pushed us forward, you have supported us, you have made us feel special. Well, we have tickets for you.’ It’s a recognition of that.”

Recently Serbian midfielder Darko Brasanac tore his anterior cruciate ligament, ruling him out for a six-to-nine months. At 31, he had started only a quarter of Osasuna’s league matches and was out of contract at the end of his season. A frightening combination for a footballer. Braulio and the club responded with a new one-year deal for him.

“It’s very evident, that he knows that at another club, that wouldn’t happen and here is his family. He is one of us and we don’t leave our own stranded,” says Braulio, proud but without vanity.

“That gives us something. In the end the players talk amongst themselves, there are situations to do with contracts, clauses. If you behave in a certain way, they know that maybe we don’t have much money, but the treatment is different. The players are Gods, but here the only thing we ask of them is that they run.”

In the cacophonous El Sadar, that doesn’t seem to be a problem too often. Few would dare not to. “Football is about moments,” says Canal. All of those fans will be in Andalusia on Saturday, and there is a certain sense that regardless of the result, Osasuna will have theirs. Canal, Braulio and Sabalza all describe it as the consolidation of a project, but those academic words are better traded for the wetness gathering in their President’s eyes.

And if they win? Nobody dares to imagine it too vividly. It’s almost taboo, a subject that elicits ellipses… Quantifying that is a job best left to the post-match, but Canal provides as good an answer as anyone can.

“Well. I am 56 years old. I was basically born on a football pitch. My dad was a kitman. And a physio, which at that time were practically the same thing. He didn’t earn much. So he had to do other things too, and when I was a student, when he had to do other things to earn money, I went to do his job as a kitman, not as a physio because I was a kid, but I’ve been a ballboy, I have done the scoreboard on the side of the pitch, everything. So I’ll put the question to you, what do you think it means?”

[Everything, I guess]

“Exactly that.”

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Tags Braulio Vazquez Copa del Rey Francisco Canal Jagoba Arrasate Luis Sabalza Osasuna Real Madrid
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