RBNY Training Facility in Hannover

RBNY announced this past week that their permanent training facility was too be built in Hanover New Jersey, 17 miles from the construction site of Red Bull Park.

The renderings of the facility reveal a tremendous state of the art soccer facility that will finally give the nomadic club a home.

Read about and take the video tour of the Red Bull's new home here.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to have the club have a permanent training facility, as well as a general home for all operations.

A few interesting quotes and elements from the official site...

"We looked at facilities throughout Europe to get the best model possible, including the one at Austria," de Grandpre said, referring to the Red Bulls' sister club in Salzburg. "In terms of MLS, we think this will be a unique training facility and the best in North America."

And de Grandpre said the New Jersey training facility will be even better than the one in Salzburg because it will be home to all of the New York Red Bulls operations.

"It's much bigger, but all the inside amenities will be similar," he said. "In Salzburg, we don't have the front office, first team and the academy under one roof. Hopefully it gives the academy players an incentive to make a right [into the first team locker room] instead of a left [into the academy teams locker rooms]."

Hearing that this site is going to be better than that of our sister Champions League squad is tremendous. I also agree with the proximity point that de Grandpre makes about the youth academy and the first team. Great stuff.

The location is also what makes this facility perfect for Red Bull New York.

MLS Youth Academy regulations state that an academy's players must be from RBNY's "Home Territory" which would be within 75 miles of the teams training facility.

This from de Grandpre:

"At the end of the day we felt Hanover was the right place to be," he said. "It's easily accessible to highways, there's 74 soccer clubs in Morris County and Harrison is just a 20-minute drive away."

That puts RBNY right in the hotbed of metro area soccer with an abundance of talented youth players to choose from to continue the progress of what is already the best youth academy in MLS.

Check back later for an update on whats going on with Red Bull Park.