England promise new centre won´t be ´white elephant´

The man charged with delivering England’s new national football centre (NFC) has insisted the 100-million-pound project won’t prove to be a costly “white elephant”.

Plans to build a state-of-the-art training centre in Burton, central England, were first unveiled in 2001 but the scheme has since been dogged by delays while money was diverted to the rebuilding of London’s Wembley Stadium.

Meanwhile rows ensued between the Football Association, which has always been in favour of the NFC, and the Premier League and Football League clubs who either questioned the need for a central training facility or suggested it ought to be nearer London.

National training centres are a common sight in mainland Europe with France’s longstanding base at Clairefontaine, near Paris, widely credited with helping develop the players who helped win the World Cup on home soil in 1998.

And England hope their centre will one day produce top-class players, as well as managers capable of coaching a national side currently under the control of Italian Fabio Capello.

The site has been renamed St George’s Park after England’s patron saint but NFC chairman David Sheepshanks is well aware that patriotic sentiment alone won’t assure the site’s success.

He is aware that the site, due to be completed in 2012, must, in the difficult post-credit crunch financial environment, pay its way or risk accusations of being a vanity project.

However, he insisted plans to build a hotel and office complex on the site, as well as a private housing scheme, would help resolving the funding issues associated with the NFC although he added there would still be a “manageable gap”.

Sheepshanks said: “The funding process is at an advanced stage but we have to wait until the tendering of the hotel – we are down to a shortlist of four hoteliers, any one of which we would be happy to work with.

“We are left with a manageable gap and we have a number of initiatives in play. This cannot be a white elephant, it must be sustainable financially and there is a robust business plan that makes this viable and sustainable.”

Sheepshanks added: “One of the long-term aims is to see English coaches being educated at the centre and going on to manage our top clubs and national sides.”

England Under-21 manager Stuart Pearce added: “Most of the serious nations in Europe have national football centres – either they have all got it drastically wrong or we have.

“We have to have an environment when we have no excuses about our preparations. We have to have British-based coaches who can match the CV of people like Fabio Capello.”

The FA has already spent 25 million pounds on the project since 2001 and the plans feature 12 pitches – including one synthetic and indoor – plus sports medicine and sports science facilities, two hotels and a conference centre.