The Manchester United Premier Cup is a global youth football tournament. The tournament was established by Nike in 1993 as the Nike Premier Cup and featured 624 teams from 15 European countries. The following year, the tournament expanded into the Asian continent, increasing the number of teams to 1,067, before adding a further 300 teams from the Latin American region in 1995.
In 1996, the tournament was reorganised to include a World Finals stage following the regional tournaments. The regional tournaments served to whittle down the competing teams from over 2,500 to just 12 for the finals tournament in Cape Town, South Africa. This structure was followed from 1996 to 2001, when it was decided that the host team and the national champions from 13 countries would be given direct qualification to the finals tournament, with the remaining six places in the 20-team tournament given to the teams from the Europe, Middle East, Latin America, South East Asia and Africa regions.
In 2003, to coincide with Nike replacing Umbro as kit sponsors of Manchester United, the tournament was re-branded as the Manchester United Premier Cup.
The tournament has grown year on year and, in 2007–08, over 9,400 teams competed in Premier Cup tournaments around the world to gain one of 20 places available at the Premier Cup World Finals.
Read more about Manchester United Premier Cup: Premier Cup World Champions
Famous quotes containing the words manchester, united and/or cup:
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I know it does make people happy, but to me it is just like having a cup of tea.”
—Cynthia Paine (b. 1934)