Louise Hollingsworth works in supporter events at Leicester City and although I have never met her in person, I have had good contact with her since 2016. A Messenger call to her was answered with “Good news Sören, you are booked for a guided tour of Seagrave at 11:00 on Sunday and your guide will be Ally Mauchlen. Friend Kev Hall drove us there and he too was invited to a very personal tour of Leicester City’s magnificent Seagrave training facility.
Scotsman Alistair “Ally” Mauchlen played 239 games for Leicester City between 1985 and 1992. After various excursions, he moved “home” to Leicestershire in 2011 and now works together with John Hutchinson and Elsie Flynn on what will become the club’s museum. Also, he guides guests at Seagrave, which isn’t a big deal yet. Our showing was one of the few he did with such a small group. His Scottish accent was easy to understand and he offered a lot of himself. There was no mistaking that he was impressed by the facility. He said no expense had been spared in the pursuit of “the best training facility”. The facility was budgeted at 1.1 billion Swedish kronor, but the final sum was 1.4 billion!
The facility is called the King Power Center and is located at Seagrave, not far from Barrow Upon Soar a couple of miles north of Leicester. Work on the facility started in the spring of 2019 and it was supposed that everything would be ready by the start of the 2020/21 season. But then a certain virus entered the picture and only on Christmas Day 2020 could the first training session be held here.
The facility thus cost a total of 1.4 billion to build and is, according to most experts, the world’s best training facility. Chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha had promised to follow in his father’s footsteps and keep the promises Khun Vichai made to the club and supporters. Dad’s vision for Leicester City was based on a long-term commitment and part of that was the building of this training facility.
If we go back to the early 60s, Leicester City trained at Filbert Street. When winters were difficult, players could sink ankle-deep in mud. In order for the field to be in a near-playable condition by Saturday, they practiced on such occasions in the parking lot behind the main stand. The goalkeepers led by Gordon Banks refused to throw themselves on the tarmac, so they trained without goalkeepers. By the end of 1963, shoe company Stead & Simpson accepted a £17,000 bid for its sports pitch at Belvoir Drive and City had its first real training facility. But the establishment was hardly luxurious. The buildings were rickety, the windows were broken and there was no access to showers. So they gathered at Filbert Street, changed into training clothes and drove to Belvoir Drive to train. After training, you had to go back to Filbert Street, to shower.
The facility was improved over the years and after the success of the 90s the club invested quite a lot of money in the facility. Belvoir Drive was actually considered one of England’s best training facilities at the time. With the entry of King Power, even more money was poured into Belvoir Drive – cryotherapy chambers, grassmaster technology on the training pitches and so on. But the entire facility was hampered by the situation. Belvoir Drive is located in a residential area with double parking on the streets outside. It is crowded and cramped and the traffic situation around the area is messy. Not an ideal place for a club with ambitions. So King Power, then headed by Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha planned for a new state-of-the-art training facility.
A suitable site was identified and in January 2018 Leicester City purchased a golf club, Park Hill Golf Club, to build their facility there. Of the 18 holes that were at the golf club, nine have been saved, which players and leaders can now see as their private golf course. In addition to the golf course, there are now over 21 practice fields, 11 of them full-sized. In addition, there is a match field with 500 seats, where mainly the youth teams play their matches.
The complex contains seven buildings and the main building where the administrative premises are located is named the Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha Building. The building also houses training rooms, a gym with the very latest technology, hydrotherapy, cryotherapy, several swimming pools, a sauna, recreation areas, a lecture hall, a restaurant and 50 bedrooms that are called “the hotel”.
The King Power Center itself is an indoor arena and media center. It is built like a dome, fully air-conditioned with artificial turf and the possibility of receiving guests. They also have something called the “Sports Turf Academy”, a school for training future generations of pitch managers and developing new materials for playing and training pitches. The old training facility at Belvoir Drive, which had thus served Leicester City for nearly 60 years, is now home to LCFC Women.
Ally received us at the academy’s reception and we immediately realized that there is a difference between players and players. The academy has great facilities and a gym that beats most, but the A team’s facilities are at an even higher level. The dining hall is divided into two parts, one for academy players and one for the first team. When the academy players glance towards the first team section, they naturally feel that “that’s where I want to go”. And that’s the whole idea of having that division, that the academy players have to give everything to be able to “switch sides”. Another interesting thing when you come to Seagrave is that the first team facility and car park is completely hidden, all to protect the first team as much as possible.
On the ground floor of the facility we find gyms, saunas, pools and more. The large warm pool is just for play, but next to it is the “horse pool” where players are immersed in flowing water and can run with just the right amount of resistance and get a very gentle workout.
We also got to see the cryo chamber in which players spend 1 minute and 30 seconds in minus 136 degrees! Jamie Vardy has one of his own in his house, he spares no expense either! From the ground floor you can also access the training fields.
The academy and first team training plans are separated by a fence, but are so close to each other that if the academy coach sees a player performing very well, they can send him over to the first team. All pitches have the exact same set-up as the King Power Stadium. It is the same construction of the surface, the same heating system, the same grass and the same hardness on the pitches as at the King Power Stadium, all to reduce the wear and tear on the players.
The players’ accommodation, the “hotel”, is also very nice. The players have their own rooms by jersey number, so Danny Ward has room one. But Captain Vardy doesn’t have room nine, he has abandoned number nine here and lives in room eight instead. The simple explanation for that is that room eight has a better view than room nine! We got to look into one of the rooms, in the picture you see room number 16.
All rooms maintain exactly the same temperature, 19.5 degrees. The “hotel” is used quite extensively as the club does not want the players to get into their cars and drive home in the middle of the night after an away game. As Ally put it: “young rich guys with fast cars, in the middle of the night, it can be dangerous”.
The indoor pitch in the “court” is mostly used by youth teams, the first team only uses it if the outdoor conditions are too bad. When we visited Seagrave there were three or four games going on on the smaller pitches. It was U8, U9 and U11 who played against, among others, Wolverhampton.
After an hour (which felt like five minutes) the screening was over and we thanked Ally Mauchlen and headed back into “town” again. Nobody said much, but inside we sat and smiled, what other Premier League club would do something like this for two Swedes and an Englishman without charging for it? Once again Leicester City have shown that they are the supporters’ team, the Leicester City family!
Thanks to Sören Filipsson for this story on a visit to Seagrave a week ago. Sören is one of about 250 devoted Scandinavian Leicester fans. From his home in Hallsberg, Sören is running his own special Leicester City fan branch, Blue Army Sweden, visit their site, and find out about their following and devotion for this fantastic football club.
CHECK YOUR FOOTBALL RESULTS
CHECK YOUR FOOTBALL STORIES AND TRANSFER TALK