IF building a football team is about people, you need more than that to build a club.

People are key but so, in the long-term, are bricks and mortar.

That’s why, as Graham Arnold is slowly beginning to overhaul Sydney FC on the pitch, major changes are being planned off it.

Having employed a series of key people to create the club’s culture, the Sky Blues want to bring them all together in one all-encompassing home.

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Talks have been ongoing for some time with the SCG Trust about making Sydney FC a major and long-term component of the stadium’s plans to build a major sporting precinct around the SCG and Allianz Stadium.

An artist’s impression of the complex at Moore Park.

Crowds over the past two seasons have made Sydney the biggest tenant at Allianz Stadium, and the club wants to cement that position by making its entire home there.

Though chairman Scott Barlow was at pains to emphasise that talks are still at early stages, the SCG Trust confirmed it is very keen to make the club central to the redevelopment plans.

“Our long-term plan is to have all our operations centrally located at Moore Park,” Barlow said.

“It might be years away yet, but I look forward to the day when our administration, football department and coaches, our junior academy, our training fields, are all located at Moore Park, next to our home ground.

“It’s early stages but we’re working closely with the stadium trust to make sure they can accommodate our needs long term. We’re in discussions but working hand in hand to establish our requirements, so we can strengthen our presence at Moore Park.”

A sell-out crowd at the game between Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers at Allianz Stadium. Source: News Corp Australia

The plans so far have centred around a bespoke administration building, similar to NRL Central that was built at the stadium in 2012, to house all the club’s employees, with full training facilities across Driver Avenue in some form.

When Barlow says “long-term”, the best-case scenario for club and stadium would be work well under way in two to three years, and substantially completed within six — paid for by the club, the Trust and government assistance.

Though Sydney have enjoyed excellent training facilities at Macquarie University for several years, the club has established what Barlow calls its “technical core, to act as the technical brains trust of the club”.

It includes the A-League, W-League and Youth League head coaches, new academy head Kelly Cross, player welfare head Terry McFlynn and board member Han Berger, the FFA’s recently retired technical director.

That group is charged with suggesting ways to refine and entrench the club’s football long-term philosophy, though emphatically not short-term results and style, and Barlow believes housing them together is the most logical move.

“As the biggest tenant of the stadium, we want to increase our presence there,” he said.

“Culturally, logistically, it’s better to have everything together.

“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if people entered the offices of Sydney FC and everything to do with the club was there on display. You’d have the CEO and his team, the commercial operation, the head coach and his team.

Sydney FC chairman Scott Barlow. Source: News Limited

“You could look out the window and see your under-14s training, the first team training, branded Sydney FC merchandise available, our trophies in a cabinet.

“Allianz has been our home ground from day one and we see that continuing. The masterplan that is being proposed for the whole precinct will make it one of the best sporting complexes in NSW or potentially the country.

“You have the light rail, the walkway bridge — if they can do everything they want to, it will be an incredible precinct.”

The project has been sharpened in definition by the visits Barlow and Berger have made to clubs across Europe to discuss youth structures and building football cultures. The academy’s junior teams should be playing in the NSW Premier League by 2016, and nine months after supporters openly revolted over the club’s apparent lack of direction, the early evidence of a road map is encouraging.