Soccer: Extra Time Red Bulls need new training ground ASAP: Backe

If the Red Bulls are to lure Thierry Henry to New York, Hans Backe knows one place he’d prefer the fabulous Frenchman not see.

“When you have to travel to a high school and then Montclair University, sometimes when you are thinking of bringing in (a designated player) in the summer, you can’t in a way show them this training ground,” the Red Bulls coach said. “You need a better ground.”

Montclair State University was supposed to be the stop-gap while the club finalized its own “state-of-the-art” facility in Hanover, N.J. That announcement was made three years ago, construction was supposed to start in the fall of 2007 and the entire facility, which was to include six soccer fields, a 50,000 square foot, two-story office building and a one-story fieldhouse, was expected to be completed by December, 2008.

And yet, one day before the start of the 2010 season, the club remains nomads when it comes to training.

“I think the most important thing for a club is to get the training ground,” Backe said. “If you like to improve players, develop players, you need a training ground. That must be the target for the Red Bulls, to build a training ground as soon as possible.”

The Red Bulls grass field at Montclair State University had just become available, but before that the club had traveled to nearby Montclair High School. In the past, the team had trained at several different fields in New Jersey depending on availability.

Getty Images for New York Red Bulls

Red Bulls coach Hans Backe said it is critical for the Red Bulls to find a new training facility.

“I completely agree with (Hans),” Juan Pablo Angel said. “Sometimes I have to be careful with the words I use, but they know what they have to do. Hans is a very experienced coach, he has been all over Europe and he knows what it takes to attract people here. Forget about bringing in a designated player, which is important, or about bringing quality players, it is about also having players feel comfortable where you don’t have to travel all the time in preseason.”

The Red Bulls have a 15-year lease on the property in Hanover, but the project has been delayed by political red tape. Club officials are looking into other options, perhaps even somewhere closer to their new $200 million, 25,000-seat Red Bull Arena in Harrison.

It couldn’t come soon enough for Angel, who has been one of the biggest supporters of Red Bull Arena.

“When you see the impact the stadium has generated the last few weeks, the same thing is going to happen with the training facility,” Angel said. “It probably won’t happen among the supporters, but it will happen among the team, which is very important. To have a place that you feel comfortable at, that you want to spend time in and that will obviously help the atmosphere within the dressing room. Hopefully we can get that sorted out sooner rather than later.”

After 10 years of starts and stops on a new stadium, veteran defender Mike Petke isn’t too concerned about the club’s training facility.

“Of course the ultimate goal would be to get a full training facility and I’m sure it’s going to happen and whether it happens when I’m here or not, we’ll see,” Petke said. “It’s not like the stadium situation where I can complain we don’t have a stadium. I could care less about the training facility.”