Benfica's state-of-the-art academy opened 10 years ago, south of Lisbon on the other side of the River Tagus.
Its location in the nondescript town of Seixal boasts none of the splendour and little of the charm of the Portuguese capital, but the award-winning complex is now the single most important factor fuelling the renaissance of one of Europe's most historical football clubs.
Not even Benfica's long-serving and ambitious president, Luis Filipe Vieira, could have predicted it would have such a positive impact on the club when it opened on Sep. 22, 2006.
Caixa Futebol Campus is not an inexpensive project. According to Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Noticias, its construction and running costs up to 2015 amounted to €60 million. However, this investment is more than offset by a string of huge transfer fees received for players produced by the academy. The five most lucrative sales gives a total of €96.2m. The whopping €35m received from Bayern Munich for teenage sensation Renato Sanches heads the list, and that is not taking into account possible add-ons from the German giants. Monaco forward Bernardo Silva and Barcelona midfielder Andre Gomes, two other marquee players who honed their skills at the academy, were both were sold for a fee of over €15m each.
But the Lisbon club are intent on making the academy more than a money-making machine.
"We are going to have a team made up 100 percent of players who came through the Seixal academy. That's our long-term plan and I have no doubt we'll get there," Vieira told Portuguese television channel TVI earlier this month.
It's a promise the Benfica president has been making for years, which, as his detractors and rivals were only too keen to point out, until recently had not been backed up by the evidence on the pitch. That all changed upon the appointment of Rui Vitoria as the team's head coach in the summer of 2015. Vitoria had been part of Benfica's youth training setup at the start of his coaching career before embarking on a managerial trajectory that brought notable successes, not least when guiding Vitoria de Guimaraes to their first major title, a Portuguese Cup triumph in 2013 -- beating Benfica in the final.
He worked miracles at cash-strapped Guimaraes with a team forced to put their trust in young, inexperienced players. He was therefore the ideal man to take on Vieira's Benfica project when previous coach Jorge Jesus acrimoniously crossed the Lisbon divide to become manager of city rivals Sporting. Jesus had taken most of the plaudits for Benfica's resurgence, guiding them to three championship titles in six years, but he largely ignored the club's homegrown players. In sharp contrast, Vitoria did not hesitate to make the maximum use of academy products, with spectacular results.
Sanches, right-back Nelson Semedo, goalkeeper Ederson, centre-back Victor Lindelof and forward Goncalo Guedes, all academy players, played key roles last season as Benfica won a third successive Portuguese title and reached the quarterfinals of the Champions League before narrowly losing to Bayern Munich.
The manager has been just as willing to blood Seixal products this term. Out of the 32 participants in this year's Champions League, Benfica were the team with the lowest average age in the first round of matches, at just 23 years old.
The eye-watering transfer fees the academy's assets have generated and the steady flow of graduates making it to the senior team are not the only impressive numbers related to the complex. Around 250 players train at the complex on a daily basis, with 27 coaches training 15 different age-level teams, from Under-13s upwards. As regards the scouting department, last year a total of 172 scouts in Portugal and abroad produced 10,332 observational reports on matches, with 5,443 individual player appraisal reports.
Covering a total of 19 hectares, the academy has nine full-size pitches, one of which is furnished with a small-scale stadium to host the B-team matches. Elsewhere, there's three gymnasiums, 24 changing rooms, two auditoriums and a complete range of support amenities including the futuristic 360 Simulator. This specially designed device sharpens aspiring footballers' reactions by placing them at the centre of a machine that fires footballs towards them from a range of angles covering 360 degrees, the player having to immediately adjust and shoot against a moving target.
The academy is also served by a hotel, the first two floors set aside for trainees from abroad or whose home is far from Lisbon and who live in situ, while the top floor accommodates the first team squad before Benfica's home matches.
Walking around the complex, in addition to the obvious outstanding quality of the facilities, you are struck by the calmness, functionality and impeccable organisation of the whole operation. You get the impression everybody knows exactly what their job is and are focused on doing it to the best of their ability.
Some argue Seixal is now the best football youth training facility in Portugal, surpassing Sporting's famous Alcochete academy. That is saying something. Sporting have produced two Ballon d'Or winners this century (Luis Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo) and have dominated the Portuguese national team in that time. Of the 14 players used in Portugal's triumphant Euro 2016 final, 10 were Alcochete graduates.
"This is a situation that is changing," says former Benfica and Portugal striker Nuno Gomes, now general manager of the Caixa Futebol Campus, who is convinced the Eagles will soon be supplying a large proportion of the national team's players.
"In the most recent Portugal squads there are more players from Seixal, like Renato Sanches, André Gomes, Bernardo Silva and Joao Cancelo, and in the next years this number will only grow."
Internationally, the academy is certainly making a name for itself. It was awarded the Best Academy of the Year prize in 2015 by Dubai Globe Soccer Awards, and there is no lack of interest from abroad.
"We receive many visits from foreign clubs to see our facilities and how we work," said Gomes, who is only too happy to dispense the famous Portuguese hospitality.
"There are no great secrets in this area and we are happy to show people around, not least because we ourselves like to visit other academies and pick up ideas. It's a question of knowledge-sharing."
Indeed, there is no question of Benfica resting on their laurels when it comes to the future of the academy. Vieira's vision for the club is inextricably intertwined with Seixal.
"I believe we have a brilliant future ahead of us. We will not change our paradigm and Seixal will continue to be the driving force behind Benfica. That's why we're going to invest in it, to increase the capacity and make improvements."
Benfica's immediate aims are to conquer what would be an unprecedented fourth successive Portuguese title for the club and to again make an impact in the Champions League. But it is the unified focus on the long term that suggests Benfica's future is a rosy one.
"Can we have an entirely academy-made team? That's our dream. That's what we're working towards and what we're focused on," says Gomes.
Coach Vitoria agrees. "I'm very alert to Benfica's B-team and youth teams. Of course I can't be sure the players I believe will get to the first team in three years will do so, but there's a system in place and we have lots of alternatives. Benfica's future is guaranteed."
Five Benfica academy pearls set for stardom:
Nelson Semedo, 22 years old, right-back
Victor Lindelof, 22 years old, centre-back
Andre Horta, 19 years old, midfielder
Goncalo Guedes, 19 years old, winger/forward
Jose Gomes, 17 years old, striker