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Before home matches in the Basque city of Bilbao, local fans wearing their team''s red-and-white colors cram into bars and streets around the San Mames stadium and chant Athletic Club Bilbao''s traditional call to arms.

"Athletic, let''s go!" they roar in the Basque language, "You''re in all our hearts, the people love you, because you were born of the people!"

Spain''s top league is one of the best and richest in the world, with teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona enjoying seemingly bottomless reservoirs of cash to assemble, and just as swiftly scrap and remake, dream teams filled with the most talented players on the planet.

Against such giants, Athletic Club Bilbao is a scrappy club that manages to keep its place year after year in the top league, lovingly shackled to a unique charter: The team hires only players from Basque Country, a proud and often troubled patch of Europe with a population of just 2.1 million.

The policy is all the more astonishing considering the mind-boggling transfer fees that characterize the elite leagues.

This summer Real Madrid spent a world record $130 million for Portuguese winger Cristiano Ronaldo. Barcelona''s players are a mishmash of locals and foreigners, including two Frenchmen, a Malian, an Icelander, a Mexican, an Ivorian, a couple of Argentines, a hat-trick of Brazilians, and a Swede.

Athletic Club Bilbao''s policy stands in stark, and perhaps refreshing, counterpoint to growing cynicism about rich clubs "buying" championships and players ditching fans for the highest bidder.

Amid 21st-century globalization, on a continent that is scrapping its borders, the Basques remain passionately rooted in their culture and identity, long suppressed under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco but now enjoying broadly autonomous government.

Always on top

As Spanish league play gets under way Sunday, Athletic Club Bilbao''s centenary player policy remains an expression of uncompromising allegiance to the Basque credo of stand-alone fortitude and fierce loyalty.

Besides Real Madrid and Barcelona, Athletic Bilbao is the only club in "La Liga" never to have been relegated to the second division. However, its glory days of the 1980s, when it won both the Spanish league title and the cup, are gone, and the team these days muddles along in the lower half of the table.

Nonetheless, fans say they''d rather be sent down to second-division purgatory than allow "foreigners", and by that they mean Spaniards, too, into the ranks.

The sentiment comes loud and clear from 28-year-old Raul Villariño, slurping "kalimotxo," a local brew that mixes red wine and Coca-Cola, ahead of a preseason game with Barcelona. "We have to stick with (the Basque only rule) till the end, all the way," he says.

Basques-only policy

Athletic Bilbao''s principles overlap with the wider Basque cause which is based on "a cultural premise of Basque exceptionality ... a country within a country," says Joseba Zulaika, a professor with the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"The core argument is that it is a very special team, an exceptional team, and that this is part of Basque exceptionalism," Zulaika said in a telephone interview.

Athletic Bilbao director Sandra Aurtenetxe credits the Basque-only policy with creating bonds of kinship that account for Bilbao being able to stay in the top division since the league was created in 1929. "It''s where our special strength comes from," she says. "We have the passion, the drive to defend our interests, like a family.

And although players must be Basque, the rule set in 1912 does not extend to the team''s coach, Joaquin Caparros, who is from Seville, at Spain''s southern extreme.

Aurtenetxe explains that the Basques-only policy is an unwritten rule, "more like a philosophy." That allows some wiggle room when considering the eligibility of a player born outside the region but to Basque parents. It also perhaps shields Athletic from claims that it violates anti-discrimination laws.

Officials at FIFA, world football''s Zurich-based governing body, said they could think of no other team in the world with a similar policy. Athletic''s restrictions don''t contravene FIFA rules.

Signpost to the future

Still, they might seem odd for a club that was international by birth. It was founded 106 years ago by British workers at Bilbao''s shipyards and Basque students returning from studies in Britain, which is why the team spells its name "Athletic."

When Athletic won the Spanish league and cup in 1984, 1 million people, about half the Basque population, lined the banks of the River Nervion, which cuts the city in half, to cheer the players who cruised along in a "gabarra," one of the old boats used to bring iron ore from the mountains.

That success on the field coincided with the decline of Bilbao''s steel, iron and shipbuilding industries. Since then Bilbao has modernized and flourished, broadening its economic base to include services and tourism.

The long-standing player policy, however, shows no sign of weakening. The club is owned by some 34,000 club members who pay annual dues, elect club officials and regard the Basques-only policy as a badge of honor.

Caparros, who has been a coach for 27 years, thinks the policy may be a signpost to the future. "Due to the financial crisis and clubs'' mounting debts, there will be more and more pressure to develop local players," he said.

Athletic''s entire annual budget of around euro50 million (US$70 million) is only a fifth of what Real Madrid spent on players in the summer offseason. The club has struggled in the last three seasons, but the tough times pulled local bonds tighter and attendance grew as relegation beckoned.

Basque history ensures on thing, Athletic Bilbao won''t go down without a fight.