Pre-Season 2025 at St. George’s Park

As the nation rejoices at the start of the new domestic football season, kick-off to the new campaign marks the end of a busy summer at St. George’s Park.

Over the course of five weeks leading into the start of the new season, no less than 10 elite teams have benefited from the world-class facilities at St. George’s Park to support the preparation for their respective campaigns.

In addition, the home of England’s teams has also hosted five matches, while the use of the site’s best-in-class pitches has prepared teams for a further four fixtures hosted off-site.

Come the end of that five-week period, St. George’s Park has facilitated over 550 hours of high-performance grass time to support the conditioning and training of 320 players.

Teams to stay in Staffordshire this summer included AS Monaco, Nantes, Fiorentina and Rangers, highlighting St. George’s Park’s reputation for excellence across Europe.

For new Rangers head coach, Russell Martin, St. George’s Park was the obvious choice of venue to host pre-season, having been familiar with the environment and facilities the site provides.

He said: “I came here a lot as a player with two or three teams to train, some pre-season and some during the season, where we’d travel to away games and stop before going onto the game after training. As a head coach and a manager, I’ve done the same, with MK Dons and Swansea, we used St. George’s Park for pre-season because I enjoyed the facilities so much as a player.

“I remember coming here as a player years ago, and a member of staff described it as Disneyland for footballers because it’s got everything you need,” Martin added. 

“The pitches are fantastic, the food is great, the recovery area is brilliant, as is the gym. It literally has everything. You can spend a lot of time together. It’s secluded, it’s private; it’s a great venue. I enjoy being here – and we’ve lucked out with the weather as well this time!

“The experience has been great,” the former Norwich City defender concluded. 

“The players have worked really hard, but also had lots of time to recover properly as well. The Club England area we’ve been able to use has been fantastic and everything’s in one section to enable the lads to spend a lot of time together. It’s been a really important five or six days to build performance, culture, good habits, the way we’re going to be together and behave. We’d always put St. George’s Park very high up the list of venues to come for pre-season.”