The Ciudad Real Madrid (Real Madrid City) is the name given to Real Madrid's training facilities located outside Madrid in Valdebebas near Barajas airport. It replaces the old Ciudad Deportiva (Spanish: Sports City), which until 2003 was the training ground of the club.
The sale of Ciudad Deportiva, under the auspices of Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, led to Real earning approximately € 480 million. The complex has been nicknamed, and is known to the players, trainers and club staff as ‘Valdebebas’ (val-de-bay-bahs), and is named after the district of the city where the complex is located. Inaugurated in 2005, the training center consists of academy offices, equipment rooms, audio-visuals rooms, a strength and rehab center, and medical (which consist of examination rooms, treatment rooms, additional rehab facilities and equipment, and an hydrotherapy center that includes hot and cool pools, a cold plunge, and a long but narrow resistance wave pool) and training facilities, as well as 13 and one third fields - three full size synthetic turf fields and two full size natural grass field for the youth, and for the first team, 5 and one third full size synthetic turf fields and two full size natural grass fields. Ciudad Real Madrid also include the Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano where Real Madrid Castilla (Real Madrid reserve team) plays its home matches. In all, Ciudad Real Madrid covers 1.2 million square meters although only 21,578 m2 has been developed.
Famous quotes containing the word real:
“Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to set them right.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)