Manchester City launch online football skills academy

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City Academy Coach Alex Gibson leads a control training session

Manchester City have launched an online football academy to help users improve their soccer skills.

Cityecademy features short films tutoring players in three core sections - technical, goalkeeping and physical.

Each section is introduced by a City player, before the club's coaches take over to go through the fine details.

The club's Head of Marketing, Chris Kay, said the idea is that "kids around the world can learn the skills like their heroes."

Manchester City have one of the Premier League's most successful academies, which has already produced players such as Shaun Wright-Phillips, Stephen Ireland and Micah Richards.

I could never have imagined that you could learn to play football on a computer or a mobile phone when I was growing up Yaya Touré

Since it launched over a decade ago, the Academy has helped to create more professional players than any other Premiership facility.

To date, 10 graduates have received international call-ups, 31 have become City first team players and 60 are playing league football.

The club hope that the website will spread the skills and training techniques that produced those players and raise the overall standard of youth football.

Some might say that a website is a strange way to teach such a physical activity, but Chris argued that the web is the perfect tool to use for this.

"What we want people to do is watch the instructional videos on their computer and then go and try it in the garden with their dad.

"We've also built it so it's an application for the iPhone, so you can have your phone out in the garden too.

"It's a way to get people off their seats, but in a way that allows them to train like the stars.

"I've done it and it's brilliant and I think people should get into it, especially when we have the odd sunny day in Manchester when it would be good for people to get out and train."

One of City's summer signings, midfielder Yaya Touré, said that he thinks it is "a fantastic idea."

Adding: "I could never have imagined that you could learn to play football on a computer or a mobile phone when I was growing up."