Academy
The Manchester United Academy was established in 1998, following the reorganisation of youth football in England, but has roots stretching all the way back to the 1930s with the establishment of the Manchester United Junior Athletic Club (MUJAC). and has been responsible for producing some of Manchester United's greatest ever players, including the club's top five all-time appearance makers, Ryan Giggs, Bobby Charlton, Bill Foulkes, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville, and the new wave of home-grown talents known as Fergie's Fledglings. The current academy is based at the club's Trafford Training Centre, a 70-acre (280,000 m2) site in the Manchester suburb of Carrington.
The Manchester United youth team is statistically the most successful in English football, with nine players in the English football Hall of Fame (Duncan Edwards, Sir Bobby Charlton, George Best, Nobby Stiles, Mark Hughes, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Johnny Giles). Manchester United also have the best FA Youth Cup record, winning on 10 occasions out of 14 final appearances.
The academy comprises age-group teams ranging from Under-9s up to the flagship Under-18s, who currently compete in Group C of the Premier Academy League and in the FA Youth Cup. The Under-16s and Under-18s typically play their academy league games at 11am on Saturday mornings at Carrington, while Youth Cup games are generally played at either Altrincham's Moss Lane ground (where the under-21s play their home games) or the club's 76,000-capacity Old Trafford home, in order to cater for the greater number of supporters these fixtures attract.
Paul McGuinness is the head coach of the under-18s academy side. He was in charge of the side that won the 2011 FA Youth Cup after beating Sheffield United 6–3 on aggregate.
In 2007, Manchester United Under-18s were the inaugural winners of the Champions Youth Cup, intended to be a Club World Championship for youth sides, beating Juventus 1–0 in the final in Malaysia.
Read more about this topic: Manchester United F.C. Reserves And Academy
Famous quotes containing the word academy:
“I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don’t think there really is a distinction between the two—are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats. And that being the case, any human being, male or female, of whatever status, who has a voice of her or his own, is not going to be liked.”
—Harold Bloom (b. 1930)
“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)