You know how Chelsea just accumulate talented youngsters only to send them out to Vitesse Arnhem in Holland to get some first-team experience away from Stamford Bridge.
Well, Manchester City are now looking to do the same with NAC Breda in the Eerste Divisie, the country’s second-tier.
The two clubs announced a five-year partnership last year, and now the Premier League club are looking to ramp things up a bit, and pump money into the small club in order to help the players they want to send there to develop.
According to De Telegraaf, Manchester City want to build a training complex more luxurious and bigger than what Ajax or Vitesse (with the help of Chelsea) are planning on building.
The Dutch newspaper explain a ten-man team have been working on the intensive development over the past few months, with NAC’s technical director Hans Smulders travelling to Manchester almost ten times a year.
For Manchester City, the level of football (second-tier) isn’t a problem, as they see this as the first stop for the youngsters they want to develop before sending them to bigger clubs.
However, their facilities were deemed ‘inadequate’ by the Premier League side, hence the plans to redevelop everything.
With the complex yet to be built, Manchester City have been showing youngsters the plans and DVDs of the new complex in order to convince them to join the project before sending them to NAC.
Over the past season, Manchester City have sent Ashley Smith-Brown, Hames Horsfield, Manu Garcia, Brendon Barker and Thomas Agyepong to Holland, with each and every one of them playing more than 15 games for the Eerste Divisie side.
