Dozens of football fields, luxury hotel, cinema and swimming pools: what is Valdebebas like inside, Real Madrid's crack factory

“Madrid, Madrid, Madrid, Madrid and nothing else, and nothing else, Hala Madrid”. The new anthem that plays at the Santiago Bernabeu also thunders in Valdebebas, the huge sports city opened by Real Madrid in 2005, which implies a technological and sporting renewal so that the most winning club of the 20th century continues to feed the legend of big crack production from its lower divisions.

Currently, 46 Spanish league players are the product of the white academy, also called “La Fábrica”, scattered in different clubs, because getting to the first team is very difficult, many know that the closer they are to the First Division, the harder it will be to stay.

Nacho Fernández, Brazilians Casemiro and Filipe Luis (Flamengo and former Atlético Madrid and Chelsea) and Uruguayan Federico Valverde went through Real Madrid Castilla, as the B team is known for Futbol Club Barcelona a great moment in their lower divisions was when three of their players ( Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi) were nominated for the short list for the Golden Ball of the year, for the Whites, a milestone was when for the 1979/80 season Real Madrid and Castilla had to compete in the Copa del Rey final, that is, the A and B, in an unrepeatable event, because from then on they changed the regulations so that a team and its subsidiary cannot face each other.

Other Real Madrid-born players who currently make up First Division teams are Álvaro Morata (Juventus), Borja Hermoso and Marcos Llorente (Atlético Madrid), or Dani Parejo (Villarreal), and before winning titles sitting on the bench of the main team, they went through their subsidiary both Zinedine Zidane as Santiago Solari, while other well-known former players such as José María Gutierrez (“Guti”), Álvaro Arbeloa and Fernando Morientes worked in different categories.

“The best sports city in the world”, also known as “the house of Real Madrid of the 21st Century”, occupies an area of 1,200,000 square meters and has since 2005 replaced the previous one, known as “Begoña”, located in the area of “Las Cuatro Torres” in Paseo de la Castellana, not far from the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, today converted into a building complex after the club had obtained the requalification of those lands.

At Real Madrid they believe that it is not at all coincidental that the one who placed the first stone on September 30, 2005 was right-back Daniel Carvajal, then winner of four UEFA Champions Leagues, but who at that time was part of the team in the Alevín A category, of which he was already the captain at the age of eleven.

Carvajal, who was chosen at that time to appear alongside a glory and then honorary president, Argentinian Alfredo Di Stéfano, is considered an example of perseverance, because he emerged from the second team, Castilla, in 2011, emigrated to Germany due to lack of possibilities in times of the “Galactics”, he played the 2012/13 season at Bayer Leverkusen and his excellent performances made him return, now as a starter, to the white team, where he remains until today. Another similar case is that of Lucas Vázquez (winger turned into a winger), who emerged from the white quarry, went to Espanyol due to lack of horizon, and returned to the Real Madrid squad.

It is also no accident that the ultra-modern complex ten times larger than the previous one in Begoña, forty times larger than the Santiago Bernabeu, sixteen times larger than the Red Square in Moscow and 2.7 times larger than the Vatican State was designed by the architect Carlos Lamela in the shape of the letter “T”.

The first team works and concentrates on where the shortest part of the “T” is located and in the long part, the different campuses of the quarry, with the meaning that the road to reach the top category is very long and of many sacrifices.

The largest sports complex built by a club is located in Valdebebas Park, the largest urban project in the history of the Community of Madrid and the future green lung of the Spanish capital. It covers 1067 hectares and from its land you can see the new Terminal 4 of the Madrid-Barajas airport, inaugurated months after the sports city.

The construction of the first phase took only 20 percent of the total space. 23 architects, 5 technical architects, 2 engineers, 4 technical engineers and 8 people from delineation, administrative assistance and others worked in the definition of the project.

The building houses changing rooms, gyms, classrooms, conference rooms, offices, hydrotherapy rooms, medical offices and press rooms, together with eleven football training grounds with natural and artificial grass, and with grandstands for up to 11,000 people. The daily irrigation consumption is approximately 800 cubic meters, and sanitary water is about 250 cubic meters.

On a visit to the sports city of Valdebebas, the first thing you see when you arrive is a parking lot for about three hundred cars, from where you can access the building. Passing the entrance hall you reach the cafeteria “La Cantera”, from where you can follow the training sessions from its large windows. Already, the lower category area generates the first restriction: only family members and even rival teams can pass and referees have access to the locker room and the field, but not to the facilities. The lower categories have seven training camps, and each has its own grandstand and the natural grass is the same as that of the Bernabeu, brought from the Netherlands.

On the other hand, the players of the first team have a private parking lot and from there you access the head of the “T”. It is there that work offices and one of the best medical centers in the world are concentrated. On the ground floor there is a large physiotherapy room and a hydrotherapy room, consisting of four swimming pools, two swimming pools, sauna and Turkish bath, and on the upper floor there is a VIP room for players and a media area.

The locker room is the culmination of the dream of the boy who reached the lower category, It is connected to a large gym and training grounds and there is a heating area of artificial grass.

Another important part of the sports city of Valdebebas are the residences, opened in 2014, with a large indoor pool, games room, cinema and 57 single rooms in more than 7800 square meters. The athletes who usually stay there come from football and basketball, and from there they are transferred to a school that has an agreement with Real Madrid and attended by seventy players between the ages of 13 and 19.

Advancing through the facilities, the Pavilion stands out, intended for training of basketball teams, both the first team and the quarry and for holding institutional events, then the corporate offices, built since April 2018 for club employees - an avant-garde construction with five floors in 14000 square meters-. And then, a partner service office. This building has two entrances, one on the avenue of the Armed Forces and the other from inside the Sports City. And finally, the “Alfredo Di Stéfano” stadium, inaugurated on May 9, 2006 and with capacity for 6000 spectators, was used as a venue during the pandemic to advance the renovation works of the Santiago Bernabeu.

In the lower divisions of Real Madrid there are players from different regions of Spain such as the Basque Country, Cantabria, Andalusia, or Valencia, but the condition is that they are at least thirteen years old, because the club considers that at a younger age there are no conditions for a boy to develop daily without the company of his family, as considered by the psychological cabinet that also works on the premises.

“The future is day to day. When you win, you have to think about the usual goal”, is the slogan that is usually used in the white lower divisions, tells Infobae a source that prefers not to be mentioned and that works there. “It is the desire for daily improvement, that is how the white legend feeds”, he concludes.

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