Manchester City's bosses wanted to connect their first team and academy sides from 'day one', and this season has shown how effective the club have been in achieving that ambition.
Reflecting on another successful year at City, chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has praised the club's academy for their latest successes which has seen both the under-18 and under-21 sides win their national divisions for the third year running. Add that to the three Premier League titles in a row for the first team, Al Mubarak hailed the 'triple treble' and the work that has gone in behind the scenes to make that happen.
As well as the conveyor belt of trophies being collected by the academy, the chairman also had high praise for youngster Rico Lewis, who broke into the first team this season and earned praise from Pep Guardiola for transforming the fortunes of City midway through the campaign.
With City's academy players in demand more than ever - they raised around £50m last summer from academy sales and sell-on clauses - the chairman believes that the club are fulfilling the promise made when the City Football Academy was built to create a clear pathway from academy to first team.
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Khaldoon spoke at the official opening of the CFA in 2014, and one quote on the walls of the training ground comes from owner Sheikh Mansour from when he purchased City in 2008 - "We are building a structure for the future, not just a team of all-stars."
Referring to the academy's latest successes in his annual interview with City's in-house media. Khaldoon said: "Think of that for a moment. A triple treble across all levels or most levels of professional football, within a club. This says it all. It says it all about what we've been saying, which is about how our Academy continues to produce and to match what we're doing at the first team level.
"And here, the triple treble shows you: this is across the board. And I think this is a testament to everyone in this Academy we have. We have an incredible Academy. We are producing the best football in England, we are producing the best talent in England. And we're doing it consistently and we're doing it hand-in-hand with the first team, which is kind of the, I would say, the essence of day one when we built CFA was how to keep the Academy and the first team all in the same place and create that continuity and that togetherness.”
Lewis is a perfect case study of the pathway to the first team, coming through the ranks from a young boy and taking his chance last summer on pre-season to convince Guardiola he was worthy of a first team place this season.
Khaldoon explained: "We have shown in our Academy how we have produced the best team in England or the best teams in England over the last five or six years. Consistently. So the talent is there. We have great players, great coaching staff, and that's producing players like Rico Lewis, like Cole Palmer and many others.
"And we have a first team coach in Pep Guardiola that gives young talent a chance, that has the courage and the openmindedness to bring them in, give them the opportunity and you have then great examples. Like look at Rico Lewis at 18, he's given the opportunity and he grasps it and I'm very happy for him.
"But I'm delighted for Rico, but I'm even more delighted for the Academy because it's showing us consistently that we are producing that sort of talent. And then we have a pathway for them, the ones that have and that we see have a pathway towards the first team that they get the chance, they get the opportunities.
"I mean look at Phil. Look at Phil Foden coming out from the Academy. He is the most decorated player today, probably in English football at his age, at his age. Look at the minutes he's played and look at the evolution from 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. We've been very careful in supporting Phil to get him to where he is today. And we'll do the same with Rico, we’ll do the same with Cole, and we'll do the same with all the others.”
Naturally, not every youngster will follow Lewis, Palmer and Foden into Guardiola's first team, and will continue their journeys elsewhere. For the chairman, that is not a negative thing, and the increased demand in City's youngsters is a further validation of their academy strategy.
“I think that professionalism, that level of development and then the carefulness, we're very careful in how we develop these young players and that's respected by the entire industry, which is why they're being targeted today," he explained.
"Why is everybody scouting City players? Well, they're good, of course, but it's not just because they're good. It's because they know we have a philosophy, we have a system, we have a track record of producing incredible, talented players, champions and that some players end up obviously with us and then in the first team, others end up going and having great careers.”
