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:
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)