Leicester City are set to train for the first time at their new £100m state-of-the-art base on Christmas Eve.
The 2015-16 Premier League winners will move into the new facility at Seagrave, between Loughborough and Melton, after a two year construction schedule.
It is hoped the new facilities will help propel the club to further domestic and European success. The new base 31 playing surfaces including 14 full-size pitches, an indoor training centre and a 499-seater flood-lit show pitch.
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It also has some of the best sports science and medical facilities available and customised gym and hydrotherapy facilities.
There is even a private nine-hole golf course.
The first team’s move will be followed in the coming weeks by the club’s entire men’s professional and academy football operation. The club has announced that its Belvoir Drive training ground on the edge of the city centre – which it has used for 60 years – will become home to LCFC Women.
The women’s team, which was acquired by LCFC last August, turned professional in the summer and currently leads the FA Women’s Championship.
They will move into Belvoir Drive before the turn of the year.
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Leicester City chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha said: “The club has taken some enormous strides forward in the last 10 years. In terms of our long-term future, this is perhaps the biggest.
“A new training ground has been a dream many years in the making, so it is with great pride that we have been able to deliver this. Seagrave will be a pivotal part of the Club’s operation for generations to come.
“Of all the investments we have made in the club, this has been our most significant.
“It is an investment in our players of today and our players of tomorrow, putting some of the very best facilities in the world at the heart of their everyday environment.
“It elevates the club’s offering to its players and staff to an entirely new level and is a key component in making our progress of recent years sustainable.
“Belvoir Drive has served the club wonderfully and been a spiritual home for Leicester City teams through several generations.
“For it to become the home of LCFC Women is a fine legacy for an historic location.
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“The investments we have made in the last 10 years have made it an outstanding, professional training ground from which their considerable development can continue.”
City’s first team squad will train at Belvoir Drive for the final time on December 23, before operations transfer to Seagrave from Christmas Eve.
The Foxes, second in the Premier League, host Manchester United at King Power Stadium on Boxing Day.
Manager Brendan Rodgers believes the new training ground will help City bridge the gap with Europe’s elite clubs and lure more talented players to the club.
Speaking this month he said: “This is right up there with the best in the world. It’s an absolutely incredible investment by the club.
“It’s one of the big reasons to come here. I’m a developer, that’s my life. It’s a facility where there’s been no expense spared, it’s phenomenal.
“There’s no excuse for any player. If you’re talking about influencing players to become better and improve, you need the environment, and the people in there, but there’s no excuse while you are there not to become better if you want to because it has everything.
“It has everything you would want at the very elite level of modern football from the sports science to the pitches, to the academy.
“It will be absolutely pivotal to how we function going forward in every way.”
And speaking last year, he said: “Going forward, you look at the ambition of the training facility because every good player wants to get better, regardless of their age.
“We are going to move into one of the best training grounds in the world and that is so exciting as a development coach. That is a huge selling point.
“In terms of development, this will be a great proposition for you here. You can come here and develop and become a real footballer.
“Sometimes in the Premier League you can get carried away with all the other stuff around it, but the bottom line is you are here to be a player and maximise your career, and you will get the chance to do that if you want to improve.”
On a similar note, Rodgers believes the facility will help persuade City’s star names to stay put rather than seek a move elsewhere, as has been the case with Ben Chilwell, Harry Maguire, Riyad Mahrez and others over recent seasons.
City may still not be able to compete with the very top clubs when it comes to transfer fees and wage offers, but the possibility of improving the players at the new training ground could be key.
The manager said in the summer: “It’s huge because a big part of the solution for us in competing at the top end of the table will be developing players.
“We don’t have the budget and the financial possibilities of a number of the clubs, the so-called bigger clubs.
“It’s going to be one of the best in the world, that’s going to give us an opportunity to develop the players, and that is going to be very important for us.
“As someone who has been in development all of his life and has taken that mindset into management, the importance of that is key.”
The cryotherapy units and hydropools will help heal players’ bodies quicker, which is vital in such a congested season.
“I think the benefits to it straight away will be that we’ll go into a world-class facility that will allow us to recover even better,” Rodgers said last month.
“We go into Seagrave where there’ll be pools, hydropools, cryotherapy, there’s going to be everything there in order to recover. That will be brilliant for us in this period where the games will be coming thick and fast.
“When we go into it, it will increase the standard and the level of everything. That was a big attraction to coming here. Going to a world-class training facility that allows you to develop and grow as a team.”