FA Confirms Burton As Site For Nfc
The board of The Football Association has given the green light for the National Football Centre will be based in Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire.
While planning permission and funding have yet to be secured for the project, The FA has already invested £25m in the 350-acre site it purchased in 200 and plans to have the centre in operation by 2010.
FA chief executive Brian Barwick said: ‘The centre is an extremely important part of our future and we can now press ahead with making it a reality. Now we must look to the finer detail and achieve a world-class facility to help our cause.’
The centre will act as the focal point for the FA’s coaching and player development work and has been hailed as the equivalent of French football’s Clairefontaine or Italy’s Coverciano.
It will be used as a training base for England national and junior teams and will also house medical, exercise, science, coaching, video analysis and educational departments.
A series of delays, primarily caused by the governing body’s Wembley-related financial problems, culminated in a decision to halt construction in 2004 – two years after the NFC was originally supposed to open – with only the basic infrastructure and pitches completed.
The project had been in limbo ever since, with some FA board members calling for the governing body to cut its losses and sell Burton.
Among the leading sceptics were Football League chairman Lord Mawhinney and Premier League chairman Sir David Richards, both advocates of smaller, regional bases that would support the work already done by the clubs’ academies and centres of excellence.
