The Football Association
The Football Association's School of Excellence was established at Lilleshall in 1984 and closed in the Summer of 1999. During the mid-1980s to mid-1990s the England Team often trained at the centre, however, today most Premiership football clubs have now established their own centres of excellence based on the Lilleshall model and this is now a rarity. The school came in for some criticism due to its centralist and perceived anti-club agenda but its star pupils included Jermain Defoe, Michael Ball, Michael Owen, Joe Cole, Scott Parker, Sol Campbell, Jamie Carragher, Wes Brown, Andrew Cole and Ian Walker.
Read more about this topic: Lilleshall Hall
Famous quotes containing the words football and/or association:
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)