New Delhi:
French league champions Paris Saint Germain have decided to build a huge state-of-the-art new training center, which is expected to be the best in the world.
This bid comes in line with its ambition to become one of the top soccer clubs in the world. The training centre will be opened in 2019.
The new facility, which will have 14 football pitches, will be built on an area of 74 hectares (182, 858 acres or 7,40,000 square meters) at Poissy (Poncy site) in Greater Paris. The new training site is a few kilometers from its current training base at Camp de Loges at Saint Germain and around 30kms from the heart of Paris as well as from its home stadium Parc des Princes.
Out of 14 pitches, four will be used by the first team and the remaining 10 by the Youth Academy and pre-Academy players. There will be four artificial turfs out of 14. All the pitches will be under the charge of Jonathan Calderwood,who joined PSG in 2013 after being voted best "Greenkeeper" of English Premier League twice in 2009 and 2012 with AstonVilla.
For the first time in France, a covered pitch with the same surface area of a full-sized pitch (115x74 yard) will ensure that training sessions can be held during bad weather. The center will also virtually serve as team hotel during training as it will have 32 luxury bedrooms and a lounge area for the first team players. It will also have 80 bedrooms foryouth academy players.
There will be a sports clinic including a medical assessment and treatment area. The complex will also include an officially-approved stadium with 5000 covered seats that will host matches for the women's division 1, Women's Champions League, Youth League and CFA.
It will have meeting rooms, classrooms, a library and a computer room. PSG club officials refused to reveal the estimated total cost of the project and the amount spent on land acquisitionbut said that this new training center will be one of the bestin the world and it will rival the likes of the one ManchesterCity opened last year.
The English Premier League side reportedly spent USD 200to 250 million to build its new stat-of-the-art trainingcenter which has 16 football pitches, three gyms, cryotherapyand ultra-sound rooms, six swimming pools and players' luxurybedrooms, among others.
For media persons, training center will have a reception area, one auditorium with 200 seats, able to house a stagewith 60 cameras and audio-visual projections. It will housefour TV studios, each measuring 25 square meters, fourinterview rooms, with one for club manager and its director, one photo studio, one catering area, one closed and glazedwork room looking out over the pitches and one covered terracelooking out at over the pitches.
The process of acquiring the land at Poissy began in Julyand it has been completed now, the PSG club officials said.
