The David Beckham Academy was a football school founded by England international David Beckham in 2005. In 2009 it operated in two locations: in London, United Kingdom, and in Los Angeles, California, United States. The academy pulled out of the London site at the end of the lease in October 2009, and the California branch closed soon after.
Further Academy sites were planned at Cabo São Roque near Natal, Brazil, and in Asia. Consideration was also given in 2007 to opening an Academy in Manchester.
History
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The Academy is said to have been inspired by Beckham's attendance as a boy at the Bobby Charlton Soccer School. Wanting to give later generations of children the same experience, he put his name to two facilities in 2005.
London
The Academy in London was situated on the Greenwich Peninsula in east Greenwich, close to The O2 and North Greenwich Underground station. Its temporary building was opened on 28 November 2005, with backing from the Anschutz Entertainment Group and sponsorship from Volkswagen Group and Adidas. Its indoor arena housed two full-sized, artificially turfed pitches, alongside an education and administration centre, and a sports medical centre. Its "likely" closure was announced on 27 November 2009, replaced by a mobile academy which could travel around the UK and further afield. Despite the millionaire player's backing, the London Academy's closure included redundancies among coaching and support staff, and deprived hundreds of children (including Beckham's niece and two nephews) from east and south-east London of their football training.
The facility was subsequently known as The London Soccerdome and used for football coaching though run by a different organisation. It closed in October 2014, with the site to be redeveloped into housing, and the dome structure being dismantled and re-erected in Southend.
California
The Los Angeles Academy was based at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills, which is a $150 million multi-sport facility built on 125 acres (0.51Â km2) of land (and home of Major League Soccer (MLS) team the Los Angeles Galaxy).The California branch also closed in late 2009.
In 2009, the 'David Beckham Academy' brand was extended to a range of books about football.
Programmes
The London Academy provided seventeen, three- or five-day programmes for boys and girls aged 8â€"15 years. It also ran a schools programme that consisted of a training day linked with Key Stage 2 and 3 learning (up to 2009, over 10,000 children had taken part in this programme). An after-schools programme (the 7/23 Club) was provided on Saturday mornings for children aged 3â€"7, and on Monday and Thursday evenings for 8-15 year-olds.
The Los Angeles Academy ran a 7/23 Club on Saturday mornings for boys and girls aged 4â€"7 years, and three- and five-day courses during school holidays.
References
