One of Europe's more successful clubs won't accept foreign players at any price. It gets worse. They only recruit from their own parish and prefer footballers who can get their tongues around an unfathomable language spoken by a mere 650,000 people. Bixente Lizarazu and Andoni Goikoetxea sailed through the auditions, but they had the alphabet on their side.
The club in question is Athletic Bilbao. The language is Euskera, or Basque. The model is unique. It's also unshakeable. Italian officials studied the Bilbao example last season when Serie A was in a mess. Their conclusions are still under wraps.
Athletic are the most exclusive club in world football and proud of it. If you're not Basque, you can't join. Their favourite saying is: Con cantera y aficion, no hace falta importacion. It translates as: With home-grown talent and local support, you don't need foreigners. Howard Kendall felt a trifle strangulated by it when he was Athletic's coach in the 80s. Their Basque neighbours, Real Sociedad, matched them for half a century but officially abandoned the policy by signing John Aldridge in 1989. They reckoned the Basque Country was too small to sustain two top clubs.
The club showed an extraordinary photograph of the 'double' celebrations which occupied both banks and every bridge over the River Nervion as the players' barge led a fleet of vessels reminiscent of the Armada.
Athletic have been trophyless since that day. Even 'Zubi' concedes that it gets harder and harder to win things. The atmosphere in San Mames, their crumbling bowl of a stadium, is different from anything you'd experienced in the Bernabeu, the Maracana or the San Siro. Thirty-six thousand Basques felt like a nation.
So why do Bilbao insist on home-grown talent when there are only about three million Basques to choose from and the French side of the Pyrenees prefers rugby anyway? More to the point, can they ever be truly competitive again? After all, there was no Bosman ruling when they won eight league titles and 24 Copas del Rey.
Their last president, Fernando Garcia Macua, seemed surprised by the question. "It's not written into our constitution that the team has to be all-Basque. It's just a philosophy we've had from the start and we see no reason to change."
What if Athletic are in the second division next season? "We'd rather go down than change our habits," he said. "I know the supporters feel the same." Paradoxically, Athletic are a foreign creation, started by British workers who left Sunderland and Southampton to work in the steel and shipbuilding industries.
Jose Angel Iribar, the club's legendary goalkeeper in the Sixties and Seventies who achieved notoriety by carrying the illegal Basque flag on to the pitch as soon as General Franco died. He was bullish about the future: "Our cantera (youth academy) is still one of the strongest in Spain. The spirit among young men who grow up together playing for the club they supported as boys is something every club envies."
When Athletic are losing, their crowds grow bigger. It's almost biblical. Followers connect with the players in a way that Bayern Munich fans can't hope to connect with Mario Gomez or Chlesea fans with Fernando Torres. They've watched them come through the academy; been to their confirmations; bumped into them in the shopping mall. If it sounds parochial, it shouldn't. In Barcelona they´re delighted when Alexis, David Villa or Alex Song joined them but it gave them the most pleasure when Xavi, Busquets, Tello, Pique, Puyol or even Messi for being of their youth academy, came through the ranks.
