Michele Kang believes the training centre being built for London City Lionesses will set a new standard in the women’s game — and that it will surpass the facilities used by the majority of men’s Premier League clubs.
Speaking to BBC Sport, the club’s owner said the purpose-built facility is expected to open within the next year. “We’re building a state-of-the-art training centre for our female athletes dedicated to them, built and designed for them, which will open in less than a year,” she said. Kang added that her architect, who has built several Premier League training centres, told her that by the time the London City training centre is up and running it would be better than the majority of Premier League men’s teams’ training centres.
The project follows a summer of heavy investment in the Women’s Super League side’s squad, which included the signing of two-time Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas.
For Kang, spending on infrastructure is part of a wider effort to ensure female athletes are no longer treated differently from their male counterparts. She asked how anyone could accept the notion that girls and women are “treated as second-class citizens where in the same sport the boys go to play as if it’s their birthright”. She argued that women have for too long been treated like “small men”, saying: “We have to take care of our female players better so that they can train, perform, and thrive as female athletes, not small men.” She drew the contrast in everyday terms: a family drives a boy to a state-of-the-art training centre and then, if they are lucky enough to have a facility nearby, drives a girl somewhere else.
Kang is a strong advocate of independent women’s clubs and said that was one of the reasons London City Lionesses appealed to her. Her first entry into women’s football came at Washington Spirit in the United States, where she said two thirds of women’s teams are independent and not affiliated with a men’s team — something she described as much more normal. She recalled that London City and Durham were, if she was not mistaken, the two women-only teams, and said she wanted to build a women-only club to show what is possible when all the attention, resources and energy are devoted to it.
She traces much of that conviction back to her upbringing in South Korea and the influence of her father, who had three daughters. In what she described as a still very traditional society, where girls have certain roles, he told her that in this day and age it does not matter whether you are a girl or a boy: whatever you want to do, you must put 100% in and you can go for it — and if you do not achieve, you have only yourself to blame. Kang, who studied at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, says those lessons stayed with her through her career. “I’m grateful that I achieved my American dream,” she said, describing her work as a way of giving back so that young girls do not grow up going through what she went through. She wants them to be able to focus on becoming the best footballers they can be, rather than worrying about changing clothes in the middle of a public park or broken equipment.
The club’s training centre is also expected to support research into female athlete health, an area Kang believes has been overlooked for decades. She pointed to injury rates as one example, saying female players suffer two or three times more ACL injuries than male players, and that something like 94% of all scientific and medical research is dedicated to men — leaving fundamentally little known about the female body.
Kang’s ambitions extend beyond London City. Through a multi-club ownership model that already spans England, France and the United States, she wants the standards being established at London City replicated around the world. She said she would like to buy a team in Asia, a team in Africa and a team in South America, so that girls in those countries grow up knowing that the best facilities, practices and infrastructure are not something they can only watch on television because they exist solely in England, France or America, but something in their own backyard. She added that the gap between the journeys of girls and boys is indefensible and that she wants it to disappear. Asked what message she had for the rest of the Women’s Super League, her answer was short and direct: “Invest.”