Officially unveiled today, the purpose-built facility incorporates the very highest standards for elite football environments and includes a world-class gym, dedicated medical, rehab and physio spaces, hydrotherapy and recovery areas for our Women’s First Team.
It will be the new dedicated home of Andrée Jeglertz’s side and staff members while maintaining full integration within the Club’s wider football and operational environment at the CFA.
For O’Neill, the facility will allow City to continue to drive our world-class standards and attract the best players and partners.
“It’s actions not words. Just coming in here, it’s an elite high-performance environment that allows the world’s best players to get better every day,” she explained.
“It absolutely feeds the ambition we have to hopefully challenge for big titles.
“When you show a player around here, instantly you see how seriously we take football and how ambitious we are for this team to win and keep winning.
“It shows our statement of intent. We are demonstrating our ambition in bricks and mortar in this amazing high-performance environment.
“It’s a place we want players to come and stay and grow with us, play the best football of their lives and get better every day. It’s super important.
“From a partner point of view, again, we’ve hosted partners here who have come to the building. You see how inspiring it is.
“It’s almost like a physical manifestation of our ambition. It shows how serious we are about challenging and winning. We’ve named a meeting room ‘winners’ because winning is so important to us.
“It’s such a multidimensional space for us, but one that has really supercharged our ability to attract the best partners, the best players and the best people.”
Not only will the new facility be the base for our women’s first team, but it will serve as inspiration for City’s Next Gen squad and girls’ academy.
At the start of the 2025/26 campaign, Hannah Dingely was appointed as Girls’ Head of Academy with Blues legend Izzy Christiansen becoming our Under-21s’ Head Coach.
For O’Neill, the opportunity to be based at our new facility adds yet another huge incentive for the next generation of talent to be part of City’s first team.
She added: “We’re making a huge investment in our girls’ academy. They’re training on the pitches outside. They’ve seen the building, so if I was one of them, I’d be looking at this building thinking ‘get me in there’.
“It’s aspirational, right? And it’s about inspiring those girls to have the ambition to play for Manchester City and to know if they play for City’s first team, they’re going to win.”
Following a phenomenal Barclays Women’s Super League campaign so far this season, Jeglertz’s team were crowned champions of England with a game to spare last week.
Arsenal’s failure beat the Seagulls was enough to seal a first top flight title since 2016, with City’s players and staff gathered at the new facility to watch events unfold.
And when our status at the division’s summit was confirmed, deserved celebrations followed by all inside the Women’s First-Team facility
For O’Neill, she stated her delight for all of those connected in making the Blues WSL champions this season.
She concluded: “It’s what we’ve all been working for. It’s brilliant because we’ve always known this group is a winning team and we just needed a bit more depth which we’ve got and the belief we could do it.
“And we’ve absolutely got both. We’ve got an amazing squad that I’m so proud of and I’m just absolutely over the moon for them because it’s everything they deserve.”
