Fiesta on hold as Osasuna run and run

Euroscene: For many of us, the name of the Basque town of Pamplona conjures up Hemingwayesque images of its celebrated Fiesta de San Fermin, an eight-day long feast of Bacchus, bulls and music best known to the outside world for the famous early-morning encierro or running of the bulls from the edge of town to the Plaza de Toros, the bull ring.

Whilst at a bull fight in Pamplona last summer, on the long way home from the European Championships in Portugal, I was intrigued to note that the young, highly irreverent and not a little inebriated patrons of the popular enclosure (sol, as in sun) spent much of the evening banging out the very same chants that football fans from various nationalities had been singing in Portugal just a week earlier - call it the globalisation effect, if you will.

Apart from the fact they are both great popular spectacles, though, the links between bull fighting and football may be tenuous. However, just at the moment, Pamplona represents precisely one such link since the club's Primera Liga football team, Osasuna, is currently riding high on top of the table.

Osasuna may not stay top for long and you can rest assured that, come next May, they will not be winning the Spanish title. This is that time of year, especially in Spanish football, when some unlikely names tend to enjoy a quarter of an hour of fame.

(Remember Celta Vigo and Rayo Vallecana in recent seasons). For all that, though, Osasuna and their talented former Mexican national team coach, Javier Aguirre, are entitled to plenty of respect.

For a start, Osasuna are minnows in today's "FootBiz" world. The annual wage bill at the Basque club is €14.7 million. At clubs like Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan, by comparison, that sum would just about cover the annual gross wage packet of two players - Ukraine bullet Andriy Shevchenko and striker Alberto Gilardino at Milan, captain Alessandro Del Piero and Italo-Argentine Mauro Camoranesi at Juventus, or Uruguyan Alvaro Recoba and Argentine Juan Veron at Inter.

For a second, Aguirre's Osasuna side spent most of last season fighting a relegation battle. Their biggest achievement last year was to make it through to the King's Cup final, where they were beaten 2-1 by Real Betis. Given that Betis had already qualified for the Champions League, that defeat was good enough to put Osasuna into the Uefa Cup this season. Here again, the Basque team's limitations were quickly exposed as they went out in the first round, beaten (1-3, 0-0) by French side Rennes.

All in all, this does not sound like the form of a championship leader. Yet, whilst the mega clubs, above all Real Madrid and Barcelona, have been battling with indifferent form, dressingroom tensions and the not inconsiderable extra strain and stress of the Champions League, little Osasuna have been gathering in the points.

Following last Saturday's 2-1 away win over local rivals Real Sociedad, Osasuna are two points clear of second-placed Barcelona with Real a further point back in third. Not surprisingly, 18 of their 24 points have been picked up at their home venue, the 19,000 capacity Estadio "El Sadar".

Aguirre has made the most of just about the only weapons available to the smaller clubs - namely, humility, team work and hard running. His squad comprises players long since rejected by the cream of the English Premiership, by Serie A and by the Primera Liga itself.

His goalkeeper, 34-year-old Lopez Ricardo spent last season at Old Trafford where he figured only on the "Unused Sub" section of the Manchester United statistics charts. His main man up front, the 32-year-old Serb Savo Milosevic has travelled widely, playing for Partizan Belgrade in his native Serbia, Aston Villa in England, Parma in Italy, Real Zaragoza, Espanyol and Celta Vigo in Spain before arriving at Osasuna two seasons ago.

Mind you, given Aguirre believes in rotating his players as much as possible, Milosevic has to battle hard to ward off the competition from Cameroon striker Pierre Webo who came from Uruguyan football for the relatively modest price of €450,000.

Player rotation, hard work, hard training and a "feet-on-the-ground" approach are the key to Osasuna's current run, as Aguirre himself put it after Saturday's game: "I'm worried that my players think it is all done and that every Sunday is just going to be a party . . . so I try to keep them busy with training and then more training, so they can't think about how we are doing in the league. After all, we still need another 18 points or so to achieve our seasonal aim which is to avoid relegation."