Atlanta United FC’s new training complex will be a mix of English football, American football and Canadian soccer.
The team and DeKalb County announced Tuesday that they have agreed on a 41-acre site near the Kensington MARTA station that will host the team’s corporate offices, first team and developmental academy. The estimated price tag is $35 million for the first phase, which should be completed no later than January 2017, and possibly total more than $50 million when the second phase is complete in later years.
The renderings of the building — a long, glass structure overlooking three fields and a 3,500-seat stadium with another field — were shown and the ideas behind the building and how it will be used shared by team president Darren Eales.
“It’s not about how much money that flows into a project, it’s what goes into it,” he said. “For us, that’s the important thing: making sure we have everything to have a first-rate training ground, both for the first team and philosophically for the academy.
The building will feature floor-to-ceiling glass on the sides facing the fields. The glass will allow everyone to see what is happening on the fields and, Eales hopes, be inspired.
“Thought that was a very clever concept,” he said.
How the building will be used to further the first team and the academy were inspired by Toronto FC and Eales’ former team, Tottenham Hotspur. He said Toronto’s building was very nice and reminded him of Tottenham, where he worked before joining Atlanta United.
Eales was very involved with Tottenham’s construction of its academy and wants to make sure that Atlanta United’s complex shares the same ideas.
The developmental academy will share the building with the first team, just as at Tottenham. Eales wants those younger players to spend as much time beside the professionals as possible so that they can learn what they need to do to reach that level. As evidence that it works, several of the younger players, such as forward Harry Kane, who were in Spurs’ academy when Eales was there now contribute to the first team.
“Beauty for us is we get to pick and choose what works and what doesn’t,” Eales said. “The biggest thing about Tottenham was the flow and the way it worked as a training ground.”
The middle of the Atlanta United building will feature the MLS team’s locker room. Eales said it will be the largest, most plush, most luxurious locker room in MLS.
At the end of the building will be the locker room for the Under-12 team. It will be rather spartan. To the right — moving slowly closer to the first-team locker room — will be the under-14 locker room, and then the under-16 locker room. Each will be nicer than the previous until the players move up to the MLS team.
The building will include a tactics room that all of the teams will use to improve their soccer acumen.
There will be four fields constructed in the first phase of the complex. The field for the 3,500-seat stadium will feature the same turf and be the same size as the one that will be constructed in the new stadium downtown. The developmental-academy players will get to play and train on that field at the complex.
“We want an inspirational and aspirational quality to training complex for younger players,” Eales said.
If it sounds a bit much for a headquarters and training complex, Eales said the complex needs to be one of the best in MLS because it will be used as a recruiting tool when the team begins to sign players.
Atlanta United will compete against teams from all over the world to sign players. To get the best talent, teams need to have the best of everything.
The facility also will be important in attracting and developing the best home-grown talent. Eales believes that developing home-grown talent is good for the fans because they are players they identify with, and will allow the team to put resources that instead of being spent on developing talent would have been spent on the more expensive route of procuring talent, into other areas of the club.
“Training ground is crucial to all of these goals,” he said. “This location will put us in best possible position to meet those goals.”
Lastly, Eales believes the complex will have enough space and flexibility to incorporate new ideas and more developmental teams should that need rise. Phase 2, which likely won’t start until a few years after phase I is complete, includes an indoor facility and more fields, for example.
“MLS is going from strength to strength,” he said. “We needed something that is future-proof. The site we have gives us the ability to expand.”
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