Sports writing.- The new Girona training center, the City Football Academy Girona, will be “a main pillar of the club’s future” and will mean “not one step forward, but two or three, and having a home of its own” according to the president of the entity, Delfí Geli, in statements to the EFE news agency.
Geli, “excited”, admits that the club needed to give “this blow on the table of having its own facility and that” this is the definitive step for the consecration of the project. The club has returned to LaLiga Santander this season to experience its third adventure in the elite of Spanish football.
“A step back was taken with the relegation to Segunda (2019), but the club is on the way to consolidate itself in the elite and be better every day,” Geli points out at the gates of Girona’s 101 game in the First Division, on Monday against Atlético de Madrid: “Hopefully we can start this second hundred years with a good game. Hopefully many hundreds more can be celebrated”.
The new academy project was presented at the end of February, with 23 hectares and seven fields for the men’s and women’s first teams, the LaLiga Genuine team and grassroots football in the neighboring town of Vilablareix. Two fields will first be built to house the first team from the beginning of 2024
An investment of about 25 million euros is expected, 70% of which will be financed with funds allocated to infrastructure from the Impulse Plan. Geli explains that Girona joined the agreement with CVC because “it was an opportunity for the club” to be able to make the goal of having its own training center a reality, a long-standing goal.
Since the summer of 2018, the first team has exercised as a tenant on land belonging to Camiral Golf & Wellness (formerly PGA Catalunya), but, in parallel, work has continued “to provide the best facilities for both the professional part of the first team like the academy.
“Provisional steps have been taken and now a definitive step is being taken that will make the club much stronger in its objective of achieving consolidation in the First Division. The tranquility that this step gives is incredible, for the future of the entity ”, he acknowledges. “It is a fundamental step in the history of Girona”, remarks the president.
There are transfers in football so that the club benefits and reaps the fruits of this work”. “It is a fundamental part of the entity’s progress.”
The City Football Academy Girona will also ratify, in this way, the commitment to the young talent of the club. The team has promises that are already realities like Arnau Martínez, Santi Bueno, Miguel Gutiérrez, Aleix García and Viktor Tsygankov, as well as loanees like Rodrigo Riquelme. And in recent years an endless number of players trained in the quarry have made their debut. One of the last has been the winger Joel Roca, international with the U19 team at just 17 years old.
“In recent years it has been shown that Girona gives opportunities to boys,” he emphasizes. Geli also remarks that the project “does not depend on the category, on the contrary”, and would not suffer from a hypothetical relegation to Second: “It will give strength to withstand any difficulties that may come”.
In addition, as its own name proves, the new training center will also ratify the club’s membership of the City Football Group, owner of 47% of Girona. In the presentation of the project, Ferran Soriano, CEO of the City Football Group, highlighted that the City Football Academy Girona will be the second largest academy in the entire group, just behind Manchester City and ahead of Bolivia. Melbourne, Montevideo or New York.
Geli emphasizes the advantages of being part of this global network and sharing resources with the rest of the clubs and underlines the involvement of the three main owners of the club: the City Football Group, the Bolivian businessman Marcelo Claure (35%) and Pere Guardiola (16 %), at the same time president of the board of directors of Girona.
“They have taken Girona to First Division. His involvement in the day to day is total. In the last two years they have made efforts such as a capital increase to maintain the maximum chances of being promoted to the First Division and now they want this to stay here at least and for the club to continue advancing and growing”, Geli points out.
He also stresses that the entity is certain that “they will make the effort that is necessary now and in the future. And this is very important because in the history of the club there have been many ups and downs. The best of these last years is stability”.
Geli also argues that Girona is one of the youngest clubs in professional football and comes “from a history in lower categories that had not made it possible to have a sports city like practically all the First and Second teams. It has now arrived and we must be very happy and continue on this path”.
The current president, a former player of the club, admits that it gives “healthy envy and joy” to compare where new talents will be formed and where footballers like him were formed.
“The players of the 80s and 90s went through a lot of difficulties, really tense moments with the risk of the club disappearing, months without getting paid, but we continue to compete even in very low categories. And today we see with pride that Girona could survive and get ahead and that now it is where it is, ”he emphasizes.
In parallel, from Vilablareix, the mayoress, Maite Tixis, “celebrates” that it is “fantastic” to have been the town finally chosen by Girona, from among all those contemplated in a ratio of 15 kilometers. The news has been received with great joy.
He assures that it is “a great opportunity” in the short and long term that will benefit the people. It will make it possible to work in the field of health and physical activity and create synergies and “wealth” in terms of “work for neighbors and local products”.
Tixis adds that he adds that the conditions are “to preserve the space so that it continues to be a green area” and to connect it with the urban nucleus, which is “very integrated into the entire municipality” and that it is “a space very open to Vilablareix”. EFE