Dingley: City want to push the envelope for women’s Academies | OneFootball

City’s Girls’ Head of Academy Hannah Dingley says the Club are determined to drive standards for future girls' academies across world football.

Appointed to the role in May, she arrived at the Joie Stadium with a wealth of experience with her previous position as Football Association of Ireland’s Head of Women’s and Girls’ Football.

Since then, we have announced the restructuring of our Next Gen Under-21s side which will be led by former Blues and England midfielder Izzy Christiansen and will play in the PGA U21 league.

As well as working closely with the side, Dingley will establish a clear pathway between the Academy and the first-team while creating and executing our performance plan.

And she says she’s relishing the opportunity at Manchester City to build a world-class youth team programme.

WATCH: Hannah Dingley interview

“It’s been a great opportunity for me to join a women’s programme and that is going from strength to strength,” she declared.

“We’re really lucky to have some really talented players and of course a fantastic set up of staff and support staff to develop the next generation of talent for City Women.

“The women’s game is growing massively, and the next step to that is really creating top level development programmes and City have the passion and desire to really want to push the envelope on how we do that and be the best in class in how we develop young players who are capable of playing at the top level of the game.

“It’s great and for that holistic development of players. They’re full-time footballers, they are training every day, they have gym and analysis programmes.

“Classroom sessions, everything you want as a top-level athlete, but they also have that education and education is really important.

“And we have a really exciting, bespoke education programme where the girls can do A-Levels, they can do B-techs, anything they want really in terms of developing that individual.

“It’s key that this is a top, top football programme, but it’s also a top, top education and development programme. To make sure we develop good well-rounded young women come the end of the programme.”

City had the youngest average age squad in the Barclays Women’s Super League in 2024/25 and it’s no secret our trust in youth is key foundation at the Club.

This saw Gracie Prior, Lily Murphy and Codie Thomas sign professional contracts and make their first-team debuts last term.

For Dingley, she wants to provide the best sessions in football and education for our Next Gen cohorts, but wants to see an inner drive to perform be built among players.

“I think they just need to push themselves to be the best they can be to make it the best environment and I always say as staff we can put on the best coaching sessions, gym sessions, best analysis sessions.

“But we need to develop players with that inner drive to push themselves. That inner drive to turn up to work every day and try to be the best possible player they can be, on and off the pitch, in a classroom as well as on the football field.

“So I would like to see those young players drive themselves, each other to create a really high performing programme that we can all be proud of here at City.”