England manager Gareth Southgate and Crystal Palace Chairman Steve Parish spoke to assembled guests from Palace history past and present as they officially opened the club’s new £20m Academy redevelopment.
Parish and Southgate, who came through the Academy and went on to captain the club to the First Division title, addressed a crowd including the first-team squad, manager Patrick Vieira, and former Eagles bosses Roy Hodgson, Alan Pardew, Ian Holloway and Alan Smith.
Watch the full opening ceremony here - or check out the speeches below!
Read the very best bits of their speeches below:
“Thank you very much. Welcome to everybody, thank you for taking the time for this massive occasion – I think you’ll all agree – for the football club, and more importantly for south London.
“[There are] so many incredible managers at the front that have helped us get to this point, and it’s great that Patrick has brought the first-team over. Obviously the first-team are the people that provide the inspiration for the young men at the Academy, so its great to have them over today.
“But everybody that has formed part of getting the club to this point can feel immensely proud of their contribution to what we see here today, because we certainly would not be here without you guys.
“We’re 11 miles from the centre of London. It is pretty incredible to be able to get a facility like this right in the heart of south London, one of the most diverse areas of the country – full of talents of all kinds, not least the ability to create magic with 22 people and a football. We’ve got a lot of those very talented boys here.
“You can imagine it has not been easy getting this done: securing the land, achieving the right consent. There has been an enormous amount of hard work and it has to me been a project of absolute joy through these difficult moments.
“Although football academies are Darwinian in a way – they’re very competitive and they’re tough – as we all know they are also full of incredibly dedicated coaches and teachers and mentors, and they’re full of optimism and inspiration.
“There’s lots of joy and laughter and hope and all the things we sometimes forget football is about. I don’t remember anybody first kicking a football for a contract or for money, they did it for fun. When you come here that’s all you really feel, is a sense of amazing fun.
“It’s proof that this club – that south London – can have the very best, if it wants to. It can achieve the very best if it wants to. This place, this facility will host thousands of kids - not just to teach them football but to teach them life skills. You might learn your GCSEs, your B Tech, your computer visualisation, your carpentry or your coding, or any other number of life skills.
“This place certainly isn’t just about football. One of the things that’s most important I think, is we teach young people how to deal with not just success but with failure. This place is as much about teaching people resilience, important life lessons, finding your thing, seeing people around the place that look and feel like you. Maybe your future isn’t as a football player or as a coach. Maybe it is as a lawyer, as a club secretary.
“We want to make this place as diverse and inclusive as possible, and make sure every single one of the boys that passes through here – and the girls, because we have the women’s team represented here as well, who will enjoy a lot of the facilities during the summer holidays – find their thing, and they look back at their time on this place, and think: ‘maybe I didn’t make it as a pro footballer, but I’m pleased that I went there. I’m a better person for it.’
“In the next 50 years I think this will touch a vast majority of lives in south London, and from not only our club and our team, but make a real difference to our local area. We can’t make everyone one here a professional footballer, but we can give them all a positive experience.
“Our motto at Palace to sum up the spirit is South London and Proud, and I couldn’t be any more proud of this academy, our club and our community than I am right now.”
“Thank you. I’m very conscious that there are people here who have had longer and more illustrious careers than I have, Patrick and Roy in particular at the front. [There are] people who over the years have spent a lot more time dedicated their lives to Crystal Palace.
“My journey was a little bit different, so what I can stand here and say is that for me everything started here as a 14-year-old schoolboy. Hopefully, that gives some of the lads in the Academy and the parents and the people that work here the belief that you can start here, and you can have an international career with England.
“Frankly, if I can end up in charge of the national team, then anything is possible for any of you!
“What have you done here? You’ve created – Steve and the Board and everybody that’s invested in the club – something incredibly special. You’ve managed to create an elite facility but keep that feel of closeness which Palace is all about.
“The obvious thing to say is that it’s a long way removed from Mitcham where I started. If we wanted to train in the afternoon we were running out of hot water, and the canteen was meat pies and sausage sandwiches and that was it – until [Alan] Smithy decided pasta was the way forward, which was revolutionary at the time!
“It’s a long journey for the club. Does a building in itself create a fantastic environment and culture? No it doesn’t. In the end that’s going to be down to people.
“But what people will feel coming here every day, staff and players, they will feel special. When we were at Palace, we had a resilience, but whenever we travelled to Highbury or to Tottenham, we did feel a bit inferior. We didn’t necessarily have that investment in us. We didn’t necessarily feel that we could match those teams.
“We could in a different way, and we had some incredible qualities that training at Mitcham gave us, and that the environment we had gave us, and the people who were here gave us. Now you’ve got a chance to do both.
“You’ve got one of the best catchment areas in the country, but if you can’t match the facilities of some of the clubs nearby then that is going to be a barrier to recruitment. So one of those differences now is changed.
“Young players when they come here will feel just as special as at any of the other clubs in the PL, because your facilities are going to match that. “That onus now is on everybody to bring it alive. It is for people to aspire to be the best coaches they can, it is to bring the building alive, to keep the quality of the facilities that they have, to respect the facilities and keep it looking as it is.
“But also, what we found at St George’s Park is that we then had facilities that players could be proud of, that created a culture where coaches could have those conversations, could mix, could learn from each other.
“So the building didn’t change things but it was a catalyst for change. I think that’s the opportunity that you’ve got now. You’ve got a blank canvas with a brilliant facility, with a board that are saying: ‘We care about youth development, we care about young players’, and now it’s over to you to make it happen.
“I think any Academy has two responsibilities. The first is to develop elite footballers. Of course, we’re looking to bring the couple of players that can get to the first-team, which means so much to the fans, because you know the way they react to Wilf [Zaha] coming through or Aaron [Wan-Bissaka] coming through. To breed your own players is something very special for the supporters.
“But also, we have a responsibility to develop young men. Not everybody that comes through the doors here is going to have a career, so the fact there’s the investment in education and in holistically developing the lads to do everything is very, very important.
“But maybe we should rephrase that, because if you’re going have a career as a sportsman, you’re going to have a second career as well. Even the very best players have got to be prepared for the end, as we have found it, the lads that have played in the past. You have got to have another career.
“If you can start to give players the skills to deal with that at an early age, then the more chance they’ve got to be successful when they go on and do other things.
“In closing, I congratulate Steve and the board for what they’ve done. You should be very proud of the facility. But now, as I said, is for everybody to bring it to life, to enjoy it, to make it a vibrant place, and to keep the hunger that, when we had lesser facilities and less things done for us, you’ve got to keep that hunger now to be able to become elite players.
“Talent is a word we use a lot, but it’s not just about that. It doesn’t just mean skills and tricks and flicks, the lads that are playing for the full-time know that to win football matches you’ve got to have physical resilience, psychological resilience, and every young player that comes through on this journey has got to have these qualities.
“I’m very proud you invited me back. Without Crystal Palace, none of my journey happens.”
