More than four years in the making, the City Football Academy opened a decade ago and has had a huge impact on the Club and community.
At the outset of his ownership, back in Autumn 2008, His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, set out his vision for the future of Manchester City Football Club and pledged to bring success on the field and to nurture young talent while at the same time remaining proudly rooted to the community in which it resided.
The cornerstone of the future was a vision for youth development and sustainability, educating talented young footballers on and off the pitch and to do so in a world-class facility supported by the best coaches and coaching programmes.
The CFA was to be a home to all of Manchester City’s football teams, underpinned by an unwavering commitment to the regeneration of the local area and community in both economic and environmental terms.
And 10 years on, we are celebrating some of the many achievements and developments that have come from the CFA and how we continue to strive to be the best.
Realising the dream
City’s grand plans to have a training complex adjacent to the stadium were finally realised in 2014.
In years gone by, Maine Road, the Club’s former stadium was actually within a few hundred yards of the Platt Lane training complex, so it was not an entirely new concept and, of course, it makes perfect sense to have the two closer together.
However, Platt Lane was small with one main training pitch surrounded by a 20-foot high wire mesh fence and often hundreds of people watching so it was no place to keep set-pieces and formations a secret!
Manager Joe Royle likened Platt Lane to “feeding time at the zoo” and it led to a move to a training facility in Carrington, some 10 miles west and close to the M60 ring road and we relocated in 2001.
Then in 2010, City announced we had won planning permission to build a new training complex adjacent to the Etihad Stadium, with the new owners’ dream of all age groups and staff employed by the club working together harmoniously at one specific location.
With the derelict Clayton Aniline site in 2010 acquired for the project, the initial plans released in September 2011 generated over 7,000 responses from residents, in person and online with a staggering 97% approval rating from respondents.
The plans were enthusiastically backed in December 2011 by Manchester City Council and approved by the government in August 2012.
Converting an 80-acre brownfield site meant that the Club spent 12 months remediating the polluted site before building work could begin.
It was officially opened on 8 December 2014 by City legend Tony Book and overseen by Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and the-then UK Chancellor George Osborne.
Footballing excellence
For a symbol of the success of the CFA, you only need to take a walk over the Nexen Tire Bridge to the Etihad Stadium on matchday.
Pep Guardiola’s squad has been full of homegrown players this season with Phil Foden, Rico Lewis, James McAtee, Nico O’Reilly, Jahmai Simpson-Pusey and Jacob Wright all part of the first team.
Of course, you need look no further than Foden for a symbol of what can be achieved.
The Stockport-born skillful youngster grew up on the pitches at the CFA, graduated to play in an FA Youth Cup final at the Academy Stadium and now has close to 300 appearances and nearly 100 goals for the first team.
Add in 17 major trophies for the Blues, a clean sweep of best Premier League player awards for the 2023/24 season, a top-11 Ballon d’Or finish and an appearance in a European Championship final for England, and it shows that no dream is too small.
Since its opening, 40 players have gone on to play for the first team but breaking into a side that has won six of the last seven Premier League titles is not easy.
A footballing education at the CFA means many players have gone on to have exciting careers away from the Etihad, both domestically and globally.
Currently, seven Premier League and 12 Championship clubs have a player from the CFA and a staggering 24,000 minutes have been played by academy graduates for senior international teams.
And at least 24 countries have a CFA player featuring for a Tier-1 Club with fees of up to £300million generated in men’s player sales in that time.
Women’s game
The Club’s commitment to women’s football was emphasised in the building of the CFA.
Our 7,000-capacity stadium is the only purpose-built stadium in the Women’s Super League and has quickly become our home.
From our first official game against Doncaster Belles to our recent UEFA Champions League win over European champions Barcelona, the stadium has seen some magical moments.
It’s also where we won the WSL title in 2016 and the Continental Cup and where we have been privileged to see some of the best players in the world pull on a sky blue shirt as well as hosting matches for Euro 2022.
And the Club keeps progressing with Joie becoming the official stadium naming partner in 2023, making it the first Barclays Women’s Super League club to secure a commercial agreement for its stadium naming rights.
A £10million investment for a purpose-built training facility at the CFA marks the next chapter in the Club’s continued investment into best-in-class facilities for the team.
Steph Houghton, who was with the Club from the move to her retirement in May said: “I’ve been incredibly proud to call the City Football Academy home for the past ten years and have seen first-hand how, with the integrated facilities, we are a part of and have contributed to the development of the women’s team.”
Best in class
Pep Guardiola would change only thing about our training facility and that’s the one thing out of our control!
“I think here is the best in the world... we have absolutely everything,” he said a few years ago. “The facilities are amazing and it’s the perfect place to work - except for the sky!”
Attention to detail was critical when the CFA was being designed and why it remains one of the best facilities in the world.
The club examined 70 different training facilities in various sports across Australia, Europe and the United States.
At the centre of the campus is the Central Training Facility, combining First Team facilities, Academy facilities, two training pitches - one indoor, and shared support facilities.
State-of-the-art medical facilities, sport science, gyms, auditoriums and classrooms aim to help improve performances from the first team to all age-group levels.
Attached to the Joie Stadium is our media centre and global headquarters surrounded by a total of 14 and a half pitches, one of which is reserved for shared community use.
Brian Marwood, sporting director at the time of the design, is proud of how the CFA is at the heart of the Club and in the heart of the city.
“There was always an ambition from the owners to build something quite special and unique, fitting with their ambition for this football club,” he said.
“There was a lot of research that went into looking at sporting facilities and other facilities and we felt we could bring a world-class environment here to Manchester.
“A place of work is important because it needs to be inspirational and aspirational and provide the energy to do your job whether you’re a player or working elsewhere.”
Environment and sustainability
This part of Manchester was historically industry-heavy so the environment and sustainability were always in the thinking when it was being built.
The CFA was to be an environmental champion with its own wildlife corridor just one of a host of innovative ideas that also included, local sourcing of manufactured goods and services and sustainable solutions across the project.
Apprenticeships were granted, local tradesmen used and 10% of the local community were employed as the regeneration of East Manchester was taken to new heights.
As part of the joint venture between the Club and Manchester City Council, five-and-a-half acres of this land was donated for public use, and is now home to the East Manchester Leisure Centre, the Connell Sixth Form College and the Manchester Institute of Health and Performance.
More than 500 species of animals are on-site with trees and plants designed to encourage endangered species.
Our commitment doesn’t stop and only last month, the installation of solar panels to generate enough renewable energy to offset the annual power requirements needed to run the entire CFA.
“There were some big decisions taken about what it would mean to us, it would have been relatively easy to have built this in the green belt somewhere,” the Club’s Director of Sustainability, Pete Bradshaw, said.
“We wanted to stay true to the foundations of this football club, a community club, and what that means to our owners and our fans.
“We had a plan, we stuck to that plan, we really engaged with the city council and there were lots of collaborations in making this work, so it’s easy to say, but I can believe [what has been achieved].”
City in the Community
Manchester City’s charity supports people across Greater Manchester by empowering healthier lives through football.
With physical and mental wellbeing at its core, the community was a key part of the CFA’s construction.
It has provided a base for projects such as football for youngsters, older participants, families, military veterans and provision for disabilities with more than 26,000 community hours played across the Alex Williams Community and indoor pitches.
CITC also helps with education, careers and learning life skills away from football.
“What’s really important about this place is that it’s open to the community in a controlled way,” said Danny Wilson, managing director, operations and CITC trustee.
“Delivering all the great work that we do with the disability programme on the indoor pitch and the outdoor.
“We’ve got the community pitch and it’s great that it’s blue because we’re Manchester City and it’s right in the heart of the community.
“To see so many people come in and engage through football and have a positive impact on their lives has been incredible.”
From Manchester to the world
The CFA has been a blueprint for similar academies within the City Football Group.
In the USA, New York City Football Club built the first CFA outside Manchester, producing homegrown talent such as internationals Giovanni Reyna and Tayvon Gray.
In Italy, Palermo now have their first ever club owned training facility. Giovanni Gardini, the CEO of Palermo FC said: “Palermo FC had the privilege of training twice at CFA Manchester in the past two years.
“It was a great opportunity for the Club and the squad to understand how to organise skills, methodologies and responsibilities in conceiving a modern and qualitative idea of football.
“CFA Manchester also was a game-changing inspiration for CFA Palermo project, the first sporting centre in Palermo in over 120 years of Club’s history: this will forever represent a concrete sign of a long-lasting bond.”
Belgian club Lommel have begun work on an elite new training facility which is set to open this summer and Montevideo City’s facility in Uruguay is also heavily used by the community.
In Australia, Melbourne City have seen 52 Academy players go on to make professional debuts with 28 of them for the Club.
And five - Daniel Arzani, Denis Genreau, Nathaniel Atkinson, Connor Metcalfe and Jordan Bos – have featured for the Socceroos national team with 41 players at junior levels for Australia.
“The fans are able to connect with the local players that come through our Academy,” says director of football Michael Petrillo.
“We are not just happy for them to become elite players. We want them to be players who are playing early in a championship-winning side, which means they’ve then got every chance of attracting international recognition.”
In Manchester and beyond, the City Football Academy has had a huge impact.