MORRISTOWN, N.J. — If only for one cloudy and chilly spring morning in New Jersey, the past, present and future of Red Bull New York aligned beautifully.
A number of luminaries from the club’s past were on hand for the ribbon cutting and grand opening of RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center. Global star Thierry Henry and his former strike partner at the club, Bradley Wright-Phillips, had the honors of cutting the ribbon. Fellow MLS great Dax McCarty was among those in the group, which included U.S. national team legend Tab Ramos, the original MetroStar before the inaugural 1996 MLS season.
Jürgen Klopp, the former Liverpool coach and current Head of Global Soccer at Red Bull, was on hand, as was MLS commissioner Don Garber. This place may well have been the moon if you described this future to the team’s inaugural roster back in 1996, huddled in a small locker room at a local D-III college in the area they called home for years.
“If you don’t have a dream, you wouldn’t build this,” Klopp said. “If you don’t have something you want to achieve, you wouldn’t build this.”
The 80-acre, custom-designed facility reportedly cost north of $100 million and includes eight full training pitches, along with space for the first team, second team and academy all under one roof. The facility features a dining hall serving food from professional chefs, an innovation lab, a 4,635-square-foot weight room with windows to the training pitch, a lounge for first-team players, academic spaces for academy players and much more.
“This is not just a training ground,” Red Bull New York head of sport Julian de Guzman said. “This is the most innovative training facility in all of North America.”
Ex-Liverpool manager and current Red Bull head of global soccer Jürgen Klopp speaks at the opening of the new RBNY training facility (Dustin Satloff / Getty Images)
The facility will serve as Brazil’s training home for the World Cup this summer. Klopp even joked walking through this facility to the pitch made him miss coaching.
While the Red Bulls paid respect to a number of the club’s biggest stars from the past, the clear focus Wednesday was placed on the team’s future, something that was echoed in Klopp’s comments.
“I can see how impressive this building is, how big the statement is,” Klopp said. “This is not about the role soccer played in the past in this country, it’s about the role soccer will play in the future.”
More specifically to RBNY, this facility will be where future generations of academy graduates will develop, as well as stars in the first team aiming to win trophies.
The Red Bulls have a proud history of youth development, including Tyler Adams, John Tolkin, Matt Miazga and many more to come through the academy and eventually earn transfers to Europe and national team caps.
This season boasts the club’s best crop of young, teenage talent since Adams, with forward Julian Hall (18), midfielder Adri Mehmeti (17) and fullback Matty dos Santos (17) key starters. All started once again Wednesday night in a wild 4-4 draw with D.C. United, with Hall scoring his sixth goal of the season. They all feature under head coach Michael Bradley, who is a rising young manager in his own right and a former player whose decorated career started with a professional debut as a teenager at this club in 2005.
Inside the players’ dressing room at the new RBNY training facility (Courtesy of Red Bull New York)
The pathway from the academy to the first team has never been clearer than it is today and, now, the facilities have never been better. Seeing results does not automatically happen, of course.
From the second floor of the facility, a number of current academy players listened on as Garber, de Guzman and Klopp each took turns speaking. Klopp took time amid all the praise and excitement to be sure to challenge future generations.
“In the most beautiful houses you don’t raise the most ambitious kids,” Klopp cautioned. “But we want you to be ambitious, be full of greed in a good way, to be competitive. To all the kids who will train here in the future, be sure to use it. This is a place of no excuses. Everything is here. We will make sure of it. … In the end, you decide.”
At the end of Klopp’s remarks, he glanced warmly back up to those academy kids listening to his every word, a few of whom may become the kind of future stars the club is hoping to cultivate.
“And you start training,” Klopp said with his trademark big smile before everyone headed inside. Those players had to get ready for training, anyway.