Liverpool's Academy Ground

The Liverpool Academy Ground sits away from the city centre in Kirkby, where the pitch is just one part of a sprawling complex. This ground is defined by its function. It is a place designed for work, not spectacle, though it occasionally hosts the Premier League 2 and UEFA Youth League matches for the club’s young players.

What distinguishes the site is the scale of its 2017 redevelopment, which brought the first-team training and the academy under one roof. The £50 million project bought the adjacent Simonswood Playing Fields to ensure there was no interruption in the training ground. The result is three full-size pitches with GrassMaster hybrid turf, built to the same dimensions as the first-team stadium. It is a practical equality of space that allows the youth teams to play on a surface identical to the one they hope to reach. Before the AXA naming rights deal in 2020, the facility was known simply as the Academy, a name that still appears in match reports.

The capacity is 1,000, a figure that reflects the quiet nature of the venue. The first team moved from the old Melwood site to Kirkby in 2020, meaning the ground now sees the senior squad as well as the U21s.

There is nothing particularly atmospheric about the place in the traditional sense. It is simply a well-maintained piece of infrastructure that exists to develop players. The decision to centralise operations here was made with a view to the future, not the past. The ground holds every card for the club’s development, but it is a quiet kind of power that does not need to be shouted about.