We went round the world and back to what City believe in...

Chief Manchester City writer Simon Bajkowski talks to Jon Stemp about the building of the City Football Academy which opened 10 years ago

- Simon Bajkowski

ЈON Stemp had never been to Manchester before September 2008 when he was hired to transform the infrastructure of the newly-rich Manchester City, yet his first day served as a perfect crash course in the city and its football teams.

His taxi driver at the train station asked him if he meant 'the f***ing council house' when he asked to go to the stadium, and once he arrived a City executive gave him a book covering 100 years of the club's history and a Jimmy Grimble DVD.

The message was clear: this club has existed long before you so learn about the history and leave it in a better place.

The job description was no less daunting. City's owners, having tried to improve what they had after their 2008 takeover, had quickly reached the conclusion that a new facility was needed to match their lofty ambitions and realised that they could come to a mutually beneficial partnership with a city council that was desperate to see regeneration in east Manchester.

So was born the 'World Leading Project, which saw Stemp and his colleagues go around the world for two years learning from what the top sporting organisations had got rightand wrong with their training grounds. One of the biggest lessons came from Arsenal, where Arsene Wenger admitted where they had gone wrong with London Colney in 1999. "We went and sat with him and he said: 'We realised the biggest mistake at our training ground on the day that we opened. We didn't leave room in our building design for what we didn't yet know. We designed for a moment in time," Stemp told the M.E.N.

"That resonated with us and when we designed the facility we had 12 teams of different age groups - there are 24 teams now and the reason why we can accommodate them is because we built in room for evolution and growth. Even now, it's starting to grow but because it's landlocked you can't really go bigger once you've locked your acreage in. It was vital that we left room for it to grow over time.