Academy – Man City Unplugged

When Sheikh Mansour presented Pep's Barcelona with the Champions league trophy in 2011, he was mesmerized by the way Barcelona built up their winning machine. It was a dynasty built to frighten opponents. This was the vision with which the City project began. All our opponents think that City is about money and buying the best players. They could not be more further from the truth. Project City was all about sustainability and vision right from the start. Then why did you spend all that money? This is how the opposition fans most often criticize us. Well, the money needed to be spent in the first decade of the project to build the right foundations and give time for the academy to blossom. Spending of the money was also very important to retain the top youth talent in our academy. Imagine that if we did not spend the money and waited for youth to come from the academy, then it was impossible to retain the talent, top clubs like Manchester United would just take away our youth. Remember that we started from 0 in 2008 and Clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal already had billions of dollars invested into them. The youth set up looks ominous Foden, Palmer, Lavia, Oscar Bob, Delap, Mbete. Already these players are on the verge of a breakthrough and looking at the style of play and identity which Pep has infused into our academy, it looks like the supply will go on and on. It seems as if the next 3-4 years will see our spending reduce drastically and we will become a sustainable machine that will take a lot of stopping. The grand vision of a dynasty will finally be fulfilled The next big transition will see a lot of youth players take the place of our current first teamers, this will mark the begining of an other devestating era of City domination for opposition fans.