Some of soccer's most inspiring stories stem from clubs standing for something greater than the sport. Usually this involves standing up for a cause, or representing a specific region or ethnicity. This can be manifested in many ways, today we're going to talk about the clubs who self-impose restrictions on their own rosters in order to maintain an identity.
The most famous by far is Athletic Club from Bilbao. The club from the Basque region of Spain maintains an extremely strong bond with the proud area, so much so that it has never fielded a non-Basque player in its 125+ year history.
Another famous case is that of Chivas Guadalajara, from Guadalajara, Mexico. Two years after being founded 1906 as Club Union, the club decided to change its name to Club Deportivo Guadalajara and only field Mexican players in order to gain more support from their local city. The tradition continues to this day.
Moving on to South America, El Nacional from the Ecuadorian capital of Quito has only ever had Ecuadorian players on their roster. It has been this way since the Ecuadorian Military founded the club and wanted to portray an image of national pride. Even though the club is no longer administrated by the military and has had democratic elations since 2013, their roster rule is still in place to this day.
In Asia we have Young Lions FC from Singapore. The club is under the direct control the Singaporean Federation and is basically a U-23 National Team playing in the local league. This means that the vast majority of players are from Singapore and they also have to be under the age of 23. Young Lions does have a few foreign players in their roster, but only ones that the federation believes have a chance of accepting citizenship and representing Singapore in the future.
The last three cases that we must mention are Olot who only field Catalan players, Altinordu who have never signed a non-Turkish player ever, and Paksi from Hungary that only uses players from its country.