David Sheepshanks,

Chair
,

David Sheepshanks

When appointed in 2008, my main role was to create a financially sustainable business brand to bring this long-standing project to fruition. I’ve been the chief crusader, but backed up by a first-class team.

Following consultation with the marketplace to build a financially sustainable business plan, there was common agreement that the clubs wanted to keep control of the players’ education within their training academies, but there was a definite need for a centre that could educate everyone else involved with the game.

The FA already has a successful training business, FA Learning, which ran 73 courses last year, mainly Level One to Level Five coach education courses, but a plethora of others as well. St George’s Park will build on that effective platform, by developing an educational hub for English football with courses in refereeing, leadership training, football and sports administration and sports marketing – among others.

Our national game will benefit enormously from this focus on coach education and leadership training – taking management and coaching to a new level. If we want to match the best in the world – which we’re plainly not today – we need to start with better coaches.

Better coaches mean better players, in the long run. This is a long-term project, concerned with team development, rather than player development. Gargantuan amounts have been invested in wages, stadia and club academies, but disproportionately little in education and teaching our teachers. So this project is about raising quality and quantity.

Our consultation and research, which involved looking at other national centres and other sports, especially golf, showed there was a need for investing in education for the game, particularly coaching.

We want homegrown coaches from St George’s Park to be as sought after as graduates from Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. We want to see St George’s managers leading domestic and international teams, so we can stop our reliance on recruiting from overseas for the top positions. We also want to raise the profile of coaching as a profession, making sure coaches are properly remunerated and have career pathways.

This will create a training infrastructure for English teams. There’s no silver bullet for the ills of English football, but I believe in building on strengths, investing in teachers and creating a CPD ethos.

If we want to match the best in the world, we need to start with better coaches

Alan Ferguson,

Head Groundsman,

Alan Ferguson

This will be one of the best facilities in the world for maintenance and choice of pitches. With the range of surfaces we have at St George’s Park, we will be able to replicate any playing surface that the England team will ever have to play on.

There are four Desso GrassMaster pitches (100 per cent natural grass with synthetic grass fibres), including a replica Wembley pitch; four fibresand pitches, with a lesser reinforced system; five natural surfaces, which have no reinforcement, and two state-of-the-art synthetic pitches. All of them give differences in pace, hardness and bounce of the ball.

This is a great asset to the country because, apart from the top six or seven Premier League clubs, most clubs just have one pitch, so players don’t get the experience of trying different surfaces.

We are 40 minutes from 14 major soccer venues and have a superb hotel and medical support, so we are expecting to be constantly busy. We will be involved with any new standards which the FA passes regarding pitches, as well as testing equipment.

Ruth Paulin,

Business Director,

Perform Sports Science and Medicine Facility

Ruth Paulin

Perform is a new brand for sports medicine and performance from Spire Healthcare, and was already being introduced to some of our hospitals, when we had the opportunity to become the FA’s healthcare partner at St George’s Park and hence create a flagship site, with the biggest and best facilities in the UK.

As business director, my responsibilities are leading the operational set up and recruiting a highly skilled multi-disciplinary team, including a clinical director, a centre manager and specialist physiotherapists, as well as a number of experts in the fields of nutrition, podiatry, sports therapy and sports psychology.

The 25,000sq ft centre is fantastic in terms of size and facilities. It includes a world-class hydrotherapy facility; a rehabilitation gym with isokinetic equipment; a strength and conditioning gym; seven physiotherapy rooms and a human performance laboratory with an altitude chamber. Services provided will include blood tests and profiling, video gait analysis and much more – everything to help athletes achieve their maximum potential.

The centre will be able to take lessons from elite sport and make the technologies and expertise accessible to the public, who will be able to make appointments, or be referred to our experts.

It is the UK’s most advanced sports medicine centre, with cutting edge technology combined with elite medical expertise.

We are aiming for accreditation as a FIFA F-Marc Medical Centre of Excellence to become one of only 24 such centres in the world.

Perform offers cutting edge technology combined with elite medical expertise

Alan J Smith OBE,

Lead Architect and Designer,

RedBox Design

Alan J Smith OBE

The architectural philosophy for this project was the same as I always use: I look at the site and schedule, and then the core values and the DNA of the client.

The core values were accessible, aspirational, rewarding, stimulating, symbolic and sustainable.

Then, we needed no more inspiration than the site itself, which is stunning: 330 acres within a national forest, surrounded by a necklace of trees. This is the land of the badger, the babbling brook and the bluebell wood and I wanted to make sure we didn’t damage any of that sanctity so the buildings were located as far down the site as possible – one mile from the entrance. By situating the tallest building at the lowest point of the site and the lower buildings on higher ground, we have managed to create one constant roofline.

We were sustainable in our building: none of the trees were removed and we restored ancient grassland to encourage wildlife, such as skylarks and meadow pippits. The buildings sit carefully and calmly along the contours of the landscape. They are split into two communities: the two Hilton hotels and training and education facilities on one side and the sports facilities on the other.

This kind of building has never been built anywhere. As research, myself and David Sheepshanks visited every European facility, as well as the Institute of Sport in Canberra. It wasn’t a case of copying what has been done before – we are 50 years behind other countries – we needed to define what was good practice and exceed that.

In my opinion, one of the most important ways to be sustainable is sourcing materials and services locally, to kickstart jobs in the community, whether that be delivering building materials or napkins, it’s all about sustaining communities. Natural materials have been used throughout, such as timber and stone and recyclable materials, to allow them to be changed, or recycled, in the future.

This project isn’t for my generation, it’s for the five- and six-year-olds out there playing football today. The building is a machine for the FA to fire up, to deliver fitness coaches, medics and administrators for future generations.

Rarely as an architect do you get a national project, so it was like pulling on the number nine shirt for England. The message of this facility will be carried thoughout the world, so I’m immensely flattered to be chosen.

We are 50 years behind – we needed to define what was good practice and exceed that