MANCHESTER City’s £200 million, 80-acre academy, which opened 12 months ago, boasts an astonishing level of detail and provides an emphatic statement of the club's intent. The Blues are desperate to produce their own world-class talent. Since Sheikh Mansour's takeover of the club in 2008, the flow of young players coming from the club’s academy and supplementing the first team has stopped, with the leap into the senior side now much larger than ever before.Brian Marwood, the club’s football administration officer, wants the City senior squad to be supplemented by “four to six” academy graduates—an ambitious figure, but one they are more than determined to reach.
Kelechi Iheanacho, a 19-year-old Nigerian forward, looks like being the first graduate to emerge from the City Football Academy with a serious chance of becoming a first-team regular.
Iheanacho is one of those rare young players whose confidence and technical ability sets him apart from his contemporaries.
After impressing on the club’s pre-season tour of Australia, he has been promoted to the first team by Manuel Pellegrini and is beginning to force his way into the side on a regular basis.
He’s scored four goals in 13 appearances for the club. Only two of those have been starts, yet he looks completely at home in a side containing a glittering array of quality attacking players.
His first goal—a last-gasp winner at Crystal Palace just seconds after coming on—was his most exhilarating so far, and it felt to those watching on like the moment a star had arrived.
But Iheanacho is by no means resting on his laurels or getting carried away.
"It’s a great moment but it’s not the best moment because the best moments are yet to come,” he tells Bleacher Report. "The game is very, very important, and the three points were the most important. I was excited and happy, but I keep working hard and moving on.”
He has a clear determination to succeed and talks with unexpected maturity, focused on becoming one of the world’s best. He plays, though, with youthful enthusiasm, with his love of the game evident every time he gets the chance to play.
"I loved football when I was small," he says. "I loved playing football with my brothers. I would go to school as well, but I loved football, so I played it a lot when I was a kid.
"At first my brother would teach me things at home when we were small. Then I played for teams, moved to academies and then went to the under-17 World Cup.
"It was a good move [coming to City]. I was very happy coming here. Before I moved here, another team was interested, so I’m very happy playing for Man City and everything is good."
Iheanacho's career at City really began to develop this summer when he made a huge impact on the club’s pre-season tour. He scored a goal against Roma and impressed with his all-round display. His vision, touch and skill were immediately apparent, but it was perhaps the confidence he displayed that was most exciting.
Where other young players often appear inhibited—too nervous, perhaps, to try anything too daring—Iheanacho looks like he belongs alongside world-class talent already. He wants to
improvise, taking risks when in possession, if it means creating an opening or a yard of space he can exploit.
It’s led to praise from his manager. Pellegrini, who has been hugely conservative in giving young players chances during his time at City, clearly believes he can play regularly, saying before the League Cup game against Crystal Palace that he can “reach a very high level." Iheanacho scored one,
assisted two and was given the man-of-the-match award in what was a remarkably assured display from someone so inexperienced.
"I feel confident when he says those things and I'm very grateful for him saying them to me," Iheanacho says. "He’s giving me more confidence to play and I thank him as well for giving me the opportunity to play in the first team. I will do well and I will do great things in this team.
"I am happy being here and I’m happy to make an impression like that with him.
"I was happy when I was in the pre-season with them [the first team]. Last year I was in pre-season with them as well when we were in America. I did well. When the manager said I would be in the squad this season...I was excited and happy for that."
He’s made an immediate impression—a seamless transition from City’s Elite Development System setup to Pellegrini’s senior side.
It all looks easy for him, but he says he felt the jump in quality: “It’s quite different from the EDS. The pressure and tempo is different."
You wouldn’t know it from his performances.
He's inspired by some of the world’s great players, with Kaka and Lionel Messi his biggest influences, but this is a man determined to create his own legacy, with his own style and approach to the game.
"They are two players I admire most. I love them both. I love the way they play football," Iheanacho says. "My game is my game, and their game is their game. I play like myself. But I love the way they play football, they’re really good players.
I learn from and them and work really hard to get to the top."
One theme Iheanacho consistently returns to is "hard work."
He may be a supremely talented teenager, but he understands that for his ascent to continue, for him to thrive in this City squad, he must continue to develop and improve.
At a club like City, top players can be signed during any transfer window, meaning existing players have to constantly improve and develop their game. It's something Iheanacho appears to relish.
"The most important part for me is to work hard every training session and every game," he adds. "There are players ahead of me—[Sergio] Aguero and [Wilfried] Bony. They are
great players, professional players.
"So I just need to work hard every training session and work hard every game, so maybe one day it will be my chance to play. Right now, they are ahead of me so I just need to work hard.
"What it requires is hard work. When you work hard, you get great rewards after that. I just need to work hard and do great things for the team."
All the signs suggest his hard work is paying off and he can establish himself as a star of the world game. Bony, already, has a fight on his hands keeping him at bay in the pecking order, and with Samir Nasri now injured for the foreseeable future, it wouldn't be a surprise of Iheanacho was added to the club's Champions League squad list when it is resubmitted ahead of the knockout stage.
So what's his advice to City's other EDS players who aspire to make the same transition into the first team he has?
"It requires hard work. You listen to everyone, then you go to training and put in the hard work. You’re not gonna die for putting in hard work. So you listen then you act. So my advice is to listen, to ask and do the hard work."
Culled from Bleacher Report
