Sporting's Academy was the first and only sports academy in Europe to receive the ISO9001:2008 – a quality certification awarded by EIC, a Portuguese anonymous society responsible for this type of certification, which is recognised both locally and internationally.[11][12]
Facilities
Budgeted at around 2,000,000,000$00 million (2 million contos), the construction of the academy commenced in August 1999 in the municipality of Alcochete, located on the outskirts of Lisbon on the southern bank of the river Tejo, and the inauguration was on 21 June 21 2002.[13] The main building of the academy has two different areas, the professional football area and the youth area. In both sides there is medical center equipped with treatment rooms, gym, Turkish bath, Jacuzzi and bedrooms. In the youth area, there are also several study rooms. The academy is equipped with a main field, four grass pitches for training, a synthetic field and a grassed area for goalkeepers training.[14]
Sporting's youth academy and the larger Sporting Academy in general was one of the training grounds for the Portugal national football team during Euro 2004. A number of European clubs choose the Sporting's Academia for training in the off-season.
The Escolas Academia Sporting (EAS – Sporting Academy Schools) are football training schools affiliated with Sporting CP. Boys and girls aged 4 to 15 are eligible to get admission in the EAS, which are in operation in several locations across Portugal.[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Angola, Brazil, Canada, Cape Verde, Costa Rica, Singapore, South Africa and Spain, among other countries,[30] are foreign countries where the EAS have been founded.[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]
