Academy a winner for Blues Women

AS WELL as building a training ground from scratch in 2014, Manchester City also decided to launch a women’s team.

- SIMON BAJKOWSKI

The Blues went big, convincing some of the best players in the English game to take the plunge and join a brand new side – and the training ground was a big pull.

Steph Houghton and others were shown around a construction site and sold on the promise that it would become a home that nobody else could offer them.

Opened a decade ago in December 2014, the City Football Academy became an enormous recruitment tool for the women’s team – significantly more than the men’s teams – because it offered resources that some top clubs still do not. Being a few tram stops away from the city centre also helps, with most players choosing to live there and give themselves a short commute for training and games.

Occupying the same campus has allowed for the kind of knowledge sharing between sides that has meant further progress. Whether it is Pep Guardiola’s assistant Carlos Vicens running through set-piece drills or academy staff Gareth Taylor and Charlotte O’Neill moving over permanently to be manager and managing director respectively, the women’s team have benefitted from how busy the training ground can be

“There’s a huge crossover. For me, even just me moving to the women’s team I’ve been in that building with them for eight years so I had a feel for the programme, how it worked,” O’Neill tells the M.E.N. “I knew lots of people already so there was definitely that bit and we had staff move between the different teams from boys and men’s academy and first teams.

“It helps from a relationship point of view and means that Txiki [Begiristain, sporting director] has been a huge help for me when I transitioned into this role and all people on the same campus can foster a relationship. It’s easier for me to ask him for advice.