Man City's new academy director excited to search for 'player of the future'

Manchester City's new academy director Thomas Kruecken is eager to find football's future stars and bring them to the Etihad.

Kruecken has taken over from Jason Wilcox, who joined Southampton at the start of the current campaign.

He left Stuttgart to sign for City and is now fully engrossed in his new task of future-proofing the City Football Academy by bringing in the world's top talent.

"I think the speed of the game will increase so its our common challenge and task to produce a future player for the future game," he told City's in-house media team.

"What skills and abilities will they need? How is knowledge changing and how is leadership changing? And how can we put all the City Football Group knowledge together? So those questions it really excites me to try and find the answer to.

"For me this is the basic [priority] when you work in an Academy. We should have an idea about the game for the future because we should look to develop the player of the future.

"So, when we have an idea let’s do it today as when we know what comes in the future it’s our job in the current time to prepare the under-11 and under-13 players for the game of 2029."

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