Manchester City's New Training Facility: A Home for Champions

The gates swing open and Alex Greenwood still feels it.

Not the usual pre-training routine, not the familiar hum of a title-winning club, but something sharper. New. Personal.

“I absolutely love this building,” she said, and it didn’t sound like a throwaway line. “I love turning up at the gates every single morning.” For a player who has lived the elite game with England and Lyon, that’s not nostalgia talking. It’s a statement of standards.

A home built for champions

Almost four years in the making, Manchester City’s women finally have a home of their own on the club’s training campus – close enough to the men’s and academy set-ups to feel part of the same project, but distinct enough to send a clear message: this is their space, their environment, their identity.

The new WSL champions have stepped into a facility designed around every detail of the modern women’s game. Dedicated medical and rehab rooms. Physio suites. Hydrotherapy and recovery zones. A kitchen and nutrition team focused solely on them, no longer sharing with the academy boys. The old arrangement worked. This one elevates.

Players and staff have had their fingerprints on it from the start. Midfielder Laura Coombs helped shape the interior look, while the squad chose how their names appear on the lockers in a circular dressing room that mirrors the Etihad Stadium’s – a deliberate nod to the wider club and a layout built to foster connection.

Greenwood, 32, has seen the best that international and European football can offer. She has more than 100 England caps. She spent time at eight-time European champions Lyon. Yet when she was asked if this is the finest environment she has known, her answer landed without hesitation.

“For a women's team specifically, yes, for sure,” she said. St George’s Park? “Incredible.” Lyon? “It met its needs. But nothing comes close to this. I think it's the best because it's specifically for us, in every way.”

That word keeps coming back: “ours”.

Food, fuel and fine margins

The building doesn’t just look elite. It functions that way.

For Greenwood, the biggest shift comes on the plate. “We’re in complete control of everything that we do here, the food, the gym, it's all ours,” she explained. This is where marginal gains get baked into daily life.

City’s squad is a mix of cultures and tastes, and the kitchen now reflects that. “Everyone in our team has very different options of what they like. We have a lot of different nationalities in our team who like very different foods and we can cater for everyone.”

Emma Deakin, the club’s director of performance services, has watched the impact of moving away from the shared base with the academy boys. At the old site, the demands were simply different.

“Over there, the requirements are different and you’ve got 200 boys, aged 14 to 19, to feed,” she said. “I think the palate is probably different as well.”

Here, the menu is not just tailored, it’s tactical.

“Over here, we can be really bespoke around what does pre-match fuelling look like for you if you’re a Japanese player, if you’re a Jamaican player, if you’re Brazilian?” Deakin explained. “We can be really specific around the girls’ tastes and knowing what they want to eat and how to fuel.”

This is what investment looks like when it’s thought through properly: not just a shiny building, but an everyday performance machine.

The beating heart of City’s project

For head coach Andrée Jeglertz, the greatest strength of the new complex isn’t the tech or the treatment rooms. It’s proximity.

“Now, you don’t need to book a meeting,” he said. “You can walk past them all the time, you can easily go down to the gym. If you want to speak to a player, you can grab them at lunch. The connection is the key thing.”

He spoke from the lounge, a deliberately informal space that doubles as City’s tactical theatre. One minute it’s coffee, conversation and downtime. The next, it’s a war room.

It was in that room that the squad gathered to watch Arsenal’s 1-1 draw with Brighton last Wednesday, the result that confirmed City as WSL champions and finally ended Chelsea’s six-year stranglehold on the title.

“Isn't that pretty cool?” Jeglertz said. “That you can switch from having a relaxed environment and then, five minutes later, it's a sharp, tactical analysis of Chelsea.”

For him, this is the core of the building.

“I think that is probably why, for me, this room is the heart. This is where we talk about connections, both tactical evaluation – we can be frank and honest with each other – and at the same time, a couple of minutes later, for the players, this is a free zone for them, not talking to the coaches.”

Relax. Reset. Refocus. All in the same space. All under the same roof.

Dethroning Chelsea – and what comes next

City’s investment arrives at a moment of power shift in the women’s game. Chelsea, champions for six straight seasons, have finally been knocked off their perch. City didn’t just take the league crown; they also marched into the FA Cup final at Chelsea’s expense with Sunday’s semi-final win over the London club.

The Blues had lifted the FA Cup in four of the last five seasons. Now that title will change hands too, with City heavy favourites to beat Brighton at Wembley later this month and complete a domestic double that would underline their new status.

Inside the club, there is no attempt to downplay what this means. This is not a one-off raid on Chelsea’s empire. It is a bid to build one of their own.

“We’re trying to build the winning machine,” said Charlotte O'Neill, City’s managing director. “If you look at this facility, it tells you what City Football Group thinks of women’s football and this team.”

The message is clear: this is not a side riding a hot streak. It is a project designed to last.

The Bunny question

Yet even in a season of momentum, questions hang in the air.

Chief among them: the future of Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw. The prolific striker, arguably the best centre-forward in the women’s game right now, is being heavily linked with a free transfer this summer. Reports have Chelsea as frontrunners for her signature.

Losing Shaw to the very club they have just dethroned would be a brutal twist for City, on and off the pitch. Inside the dressing room, the hope is obvious.

“I would love Bunny to stay at this football club forever,” Greenwood said. Her locker sits next to Shaw’s, the only break from the otherwise strict numerical order in the circular changing room. That small detail says plenty about their bond.

“She’s an incredible person. I absolutely love her and hope I’m celebrating with her for many years to come.”

Jeglertz, though, has to plan for every scenario. Over the weekend he expressed confidence that, come July, he will have a squad capable of defending the title, with or without his star No 9.

The building is here. The structure is in place. The culture is growing.

City have their own space now, their own standards, their own stage. The question is no longer whether they can catch Chelsea.

It’s how long they intend to stay in front.