Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur has unveiled N17 Arena, a new community space and talent identification centre on the campus of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The space is located in the southeast of the stadium campus on the corner of Park Lane and Worcester Avenue. N17 Arena comprises two pitches with accompanying floodlighting provided by Musco, the official field of play lighting supplier for Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
One of the pitches is an astroturf surface that will be used as an inner-city talent ID centre by the club’s academy and global football development team. The other pitch has been described as a “revolutionary” playing surface made from over 18,000 recycled trainers, delivered by Nike Grind, which will host a range of free sporting activities for locals.
N17 Arena will also be used to deliver activations for match days and other events held at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as the club continues its drive to create a premium sports and entertainment destination. Activations will include street food markets, match screenings and live music.
Local primary schools will be given the chance to select gifted and talented students aged 6-11 to take part in six-week programmes delivered by Tottenham coaches. The programmes will give students the chance to progress to Academy Development Centre sessions that will also take place at N17 Arena.
Tottenham’s academy manager Dean Rastrick said: “The club has been looking for some time at having a base in Tottenham that will enable us to identify young players, both boys and girls, within our catchment area.
“N17 Arena gives us a fantastic opportunity to bring young players from the Tottenham and Edmonton area to the core of our academy programme. It is unique for a club to have an inner-city pre-academy programme based at its stadium in the heart of the community, and if we can get a young player from Tottenham to make that journey all the way through from N17 Arena into the first team, it will be a brilliant story and mean so much to everyone connected with the club.”
The Nike Grind court will be accessible to the local community from Monday to Friday with timetabled free sporting activities to include after-school clubs, fitness sessions for locals, walking football sessions for older people, and disability sport provision.
Donna-Maria Cullen, executive director at Tottenham and trustee of the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, added: “We cannot stress enough the importance of facilities like this existing in the heart of our communities – providing the opportunity for local people to take part in fun, sporting activities in a structured way with our fantastic coaches overseeing.
“We are extremely grateful to Musco for this invaluable contribution to Tottenham.We are well aware of the footballing talent that exists in this area – so much of which could slip through the net simply due to a lack of access to elite facilities. N17 Arena can change all of that – if there is a budding young player, male or female, in our locality, this is where they can get their break.
“All of this is happening on the footprint of the stadium campus, providing a truly inspirational setting and what we hope will be a real asset to the community.”
The NFL will be using the new space to deliver a series of activations around its upcoming games at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the first of which takes place this Sunday.
Image: Hzh/CC BY-SA 4.0/Edited for size
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