The cantera (quarry) of Spanish professional football club CA Osasuna is the organisation's youth academy, developing players from childhood through to the integration of the best prospects into the adult teams.
The final category within the youth structure is the Juvenil A () under-18/19 team which represents the club in national competition. The successful graduates then usually move to the club's affiliated team for younger players, CD Subiza (previously CD Iruña), or to the reserve team, Osasuna B which are also considered part of the cantera due to being stages in progression towards the senior team, albeit competing in the adult league system.
The academy is based at the club training complex, Tajonar, which is often the metonym used to refer to the system itself.
Background
The top football clubs in the Spanish leagues generally place great importance in developing their cantera to promote the players from within or sell to other clubs as a source of revenue, and Osasuna is no exception. Their youth recruitment network is focused primarily around their home region of Navarre and there are collaboration agreements in place with the small clubs in the region.
Navarre has a population of just 640,000, a small catchment zone for an elite football club, and additionally Osasuna faces a battle for some of the region's talented young players due to the presence of Athletic Bilbao, whose Basque-only player recruitment policy includes Navarre in its definition. In the 1990s and 2000s, several prominent players made the journey directly from Pamplona to Bilbao, including Ziganda, Larrainzar, Lacruz, Tiko, Orbaiz, Javi Martínez, David López and Muñoz, while others such as Goikoetxea, José Mari and Ezquerro moved from Osasuna to Athletic via other clubs. The Biscay organisation have an affiliate team (UDC Txantrea) in Pamplona, and several promising players who might otherwise have been likely to join Osasuna, the closest major club to their home towns (such as Iraizoz, Gurpegui, Llorente, San José and Muniain) were recruited by Athletic instead. This situation of increasingly aggressive recruitment fostered a tense relationship between the two clubs, arguably more so than any on-field battles.
After a spell in the late 2000s during which Osasuna had few new academy graduates joining their main squad while Athletic reached a European final with a team full of Navarros, the trend reversed: Osasuna's relegation from La Liga in 2014 provided an opportunity for several academy players to integrate into the side in the less intense atmosphere of the second tier, and they played a role in the club's return to the top level in 2016. Meanwhile, Athletic recruited hardly any further youth players from Navarre in the same period, although the likes of Williams and Remiro were already at the Bilbao club. In the late 2010s, Villarreal also began to make repeated 'raids' on Osasuna, enticing several young teenagers to join their setup, as did Barcelona.
According to a 2016 report, Osasuna had a total of 11 homegrown players (as per UEFA guidelines, three years of training between 15 and 21 years old) still at their formative club, with another five at other top clubs across Europe. As a club from a small city with limited resources, the youth department's ability to train such coveted players (as well as provide others to the senior squad) is a vital source of income. The departures of four of the former youth players, all of whom became Spanish internationals – Raúl García, Monreal, Javi Martínez and Azpilicueta – earned Osasuna €31 million in transfer fees; the fifth and last of those departures, under-21 midfielder Mikel Merino, brought in a further €4 million.