AC Milan have announced that they will launch an academy in Virginia, United States, in the spring of 2024. This will be their first academy in the country, having already expanded into Asia and other European countries.
The new academy was announced by Milan on their website and it’s another step in the right direction. As evidenced by the Primavera this season, with many promising players shining, having a strong academy sector is essential for a top club like Milan.
In partnership with Black&Red Pumas LLC, the AC Milan Academy Virginia will officially open in the spring of 2024 in Fairfax, Virginia and the Washington Metropolitan Area (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia).
The training program will directly involve boys and girls from 5 to 17 years old in an elite technical program that will support them in their sporting and personal growth. Milan will spread their experience and tradition through a team of sporting professionals who are specialists in the Rossoneri Method.
The project is expected to kick off in December with a five-day Camp ahead of the official opening of the AC Milan Academy in the spring of 2024, with the Club planning to further develop the project in North America in the future.
Maikel Oettle, Chief Commercial Officer of AC Milan, affirmed: “AC Milan Academy Virginia is another piece in the consolidation process of the AC Milan brand on a global level. The launch of the AC Milan Academy project in the US territory attests to our commitment and our contribution to the promotion of football in North America, through which we aim to export the values of AC Milan worldwide.”
Dario Scatena, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Black & Red Pumas LLC, added: “As an Italian and an AC Milan fan, I am very pleased with this collaboration that will bring the colours and values of AC Milan and Italian traditions to the American territory. I am very confident that the excellence and the AC Milan Method will bring great benefits, firstly for the young players in their personal growth, and then for American soccer. This is a family for me, and I look forward to both girls and boys feeling part of this great family and growing in every aspect with its values.”
This sounds great, but I can’t help but wonder if this is branding exercise/licensing deal or if the club is actually trying to work to discover and nurture talent in the USA. Most of the club academies here are the former, taking advantage of the “pay to play” system that unfortunately is prevalent in this country. I’d love to see an academy like this try to find talent in the cities by creating facilities for kids to learn the game and play pick up instead of taking the money of upper middle class parents who will pay big money to say their kid is in the AC Milan academy.
Seems like a good opportunity to do both to be honest, use some pay to play to offset the higher cost of an academy in a very developed country (also wealthy background doesn‘t equal bad talent) and give out a good number of stipendia, at least that would be my strategy.
Branding for sure. There are many established “great” academies already in existence in the States and Canada
Also, based on how few youths go from Milan academies to the senior team, I wouldn’t send my kid to a Milan academy. The better ones are in France, Clairefontaine for example
Why Virginia? It’s like the backwater of US… Establish it somewhere with some sort of soccer interest… Nothing but hillbillies in VA.
This Academy is in Northern Virginia/Fairfax/DC metro area. It is one of the wealthiest regions in the whole US, definitely not hillbilly territory. This area is also traditionally a hotbed of soccer talent in the US.
If you call 30 minutes from the country’s capital backwater than yeah. The distance from Boston to Washington DC and all the cities between are interconnected with a massive population around 50 million people. You may be thinking of West Virginia with your hillbillies comment. Southern California may be a better location but every EPL team has an academy location there and very expensive but yes Milan could put one there also. As TonyK mentioned the US needs a better pick up culture which it lacks but facilities are being built trying to create this type of culture. In the US there are plenty of parks for basketball and baseball but you will never see a goal on a filed that is free to play. Soccer/football is a rich boys game in the US. The US needs to ditch their over emphasis on strong fast player that can run for days and focus more on developing technically gifted players (the reason we fan boy over Pulisic and Reyna).
Wth why Virginia? Texas and cali are where the biggest player base is due to being near the boarder. Put the academy in a area that is at least super diverse and doesn’t have as much money so you can find the real talent.
Washington (State) has produced the most US professional footballers with Virginia coming in eighth.
To be honest I’ve never heard of a player in any team on a foreign academy actually make it for the first team
Some keyboard warriors think they are smarter than Billion Dollar Investor who actually runs the Club