City copy Barca blueprint for youth

MANCHESTER CITY say they are aiming to emulate Barcelona on and off the pitch after announcing detailed plans for a giant new training complex.

The 80-acre scheme is also part of City’s plans to conform with UEFA’s financial fair play regulations — investment in training facilities is exempt from the rules stating clubs can only spend what they earn.

City’s chief football operations officer Brian Marwood highlighted Barcelona having eight home-grown players in their Champions League final line-up as something the club aspire to.

Marwood said the club would always continue to buy players from all over the world — they have spent nearly £400m in the last three years alone — but will now put much more emphasis on developing their own in order to conform with the UEFA rules.

He said: “Everybody is getting quite concerned about financial fair play, and rightly so. But it’s not just us, everybody is looking at us but there are a lot of other football clubs looking very carefully at their own situation.

“We’re quite comfortable in terms of the work we have done to date, we know that we have still got a huge amount of work still to do before we conform, and this is part of that process. To develop your own home-grown talent is a big part of what we do.

“If you look a Barcelona, they had eight home-grown players playing in the Champions League final which is an incredible achievement and that is something that is an ambition for our football club.

“This could be the most important investment the club has ever made under its new ownership.”

The sponsorship deal with Etihad announced last month, for around £400m, will help fund the complex which will be known as the Etihad campus.

“That’s part of the whole Etihad partnership with Manchester City,” added Marwood.

The cost of the complex — joined to their stadium in east Manchester via a bridge — has yet to be finalised, but the plans submitted for planning approval are for a 7,000-seat mini-stadium, 15 full-size pitches, a gym, medical centre and sleeping accommodation for 72 players.

England’s £100m national football centre in Burton is on a similar scale — but without the mini-stadium or bridge.

Marwood admitted that the current rate of spending on players was unsustainable. He said: “We’ve had an accelerated investment for the last three years, we have probably crammed 10 years’ work into three.

“But we believe now that we have a squad of players that can compete at every level.

“I think that we all believe as a club that that is not sustainable.

“Therefore while we have had a very good record of producing young players at this club I think what we are trying to do is enhance that and produce young players that are good enough to play in the Champions League.”