The New 2021/22 Season Brings To End A Busy Pre-Season At St. George’s Park

Practise at St George's Park

  • Crystal Palace, Brentford, Real Betis, Watford and four other professional football teams utilised the stunning facilities of St. George’s Park for camps over summer
  • Four pre-Olympic/Paralympic camps were hosted on the prestigious grounds, in addition to 60 education courses, and numerous tournaments including The FA Disability Cup
  • The busy pre-season marks an exciting year for St. George’s Park following the performance of the Senior Men’s National Team in UEFA EURO 2020

The start of the 2021/22 campaign signalled the end to a busy pre-season at St. George’s Park, with the Staffordshire venue hosting several elite football clubs as they completed their vital preparations for the new season.

Crystal Palace and Brentford joined Portsmouth, MK Dons and Wolverhampton Wanderers in using the site’s state-of-the-art facilities across the summer, with Manuel Pellegrini’s Real Betis, Southampton’s B Team and Brighton & Hove Albion’s Academy making up the footballing cohort. 12 pre-season fixtures were completed at England’s base, offering players pristine playing surfaces on which to finish their pre-season preparations.

As with previous years, elite sports teams making use of the base reached well beyond football, with four pre-Olympic and Paralympic camps being hosted on-site ahead of this summer’s events in Tokyo.



July also saw the return of business events on-site, with members of the Leaders Performance Institute hosted as part of the organisation’s Leaders Meet: High Performance Environments development day. St. George’s Park provided the perfect backdrop for the high-performance community to explore case studies and explore how the area will continue to evolve now and into the future, with the world-class facilities a base for the England Technical teams who operate at the epicentre of the high-performance landscape.

Multiple grassroots tournaments also took place across the world-class playing surfaces at the Burton site, in addition to the fifth edition of The FA Disability Cup - the largest competition of its kind in this country, giving players within impairment-specific football a national competition of their own.

Holly Murdoch, General Manager of St. George’s Park said: “After playing a part in England Men’s Senior team reaching a major tournament final for the first time since 1966, it has been a pleasure to host so many sporting teams and sports-stars on our grounds. After what has been a challenging 18 months for all sports, seeing our facilities being utilised to their full potential has been very exciting for all the team on site.”

Throughout the pre-season, the ‘team behind the teams’ ensured St. George’s Park remained fully operational, with a COVID Screening Centre, administering over 7000 Lateral Flow Tests.