The Sun Jihai & The European Garden for City Youth Training Football Base is a future

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

academy based in

Chongqing Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The brainchild of footballer and former China national team captain Sun Jihai, the academy will be funded by Sunac and based in their The European Garden for City complex.

Facilities

The central feature of the academy will be its full-sized 11-a-side pitch, laid out to FIFA A-grade standard. In addition, the almost 99-acre development will feature three seven-a-side pitches and six five-a-side pitches.

Affiliations

While owned and operated independently of any football club, the Youth Training Football Base will work in conjunction with renowned teams from around the world to bring in top-level youth football coaches, particularly from Valencia as well as those from Jihai's former club

Manchester City Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...

. Additionally, in order to enhance the development and experience of the youths in the program, the academy will run various summer camps and events allowing its participants to travel to the academies of foreign clubs to train in Manchester as well as at other world class club facilities around Europe.

References

Football academies in Asia Sports venues in Chongqing Manchester City F.C. {{footy-stub