Inside The Academy Nick Cox reviews 2023 for Man Utd

We’ve also seen Marcus named the club’s Player of the Season, Alejandro take massive strides in his development, Jonny return to the club to play a crucial role, Kobbie, Dan and Willy make debuts and begin to assert themselves in the senior set-up. Hannibal scored his first United goal, too.

Away from the club, it’s been really pleasing to see boys succeed with other teams, whether on loan or permanently. Charlie Savage left us in summer and his good performances with Reading have earned him a first international cap for Wales. That’s an incredible achievement. Will Fish is building a career for himself on loan at Hibernian, starting every week, sometimes several times a week, and testing himself against great players. In the Premier League, we’ve seen outstanding performances from Teden Mengi, Anthony Elanga, James Garner and Tahith Chong. When those boys do well, there’s a bit of a buzz around the place. Our job is to help young players reach their full potential regardless of where this takes them, whether it be Reading for Charlie or FC Utrecht for Zidane Iqbal, who also left us in summer, or Bayer Leverkusen for Matej Kovar.

These are very much the success stories focused on the top of our programme. Fans can and do notice these and celebrate them themselves. But staff take great satisfaction in supporting young players across the programme to reach their full potential and enjoy the journey, too.

I’ve been really vocal about how I believe the pursuit of excellence within an academy provides incredible opportunity for personal growth. Tours, for example, play a huge role in facilitating development. They are a key part of our programme and one of the things that we can do more of than most other clubs in the world. Our U16s have gone to Hong Kong, a trip which was filmed and turned into a brilliant film, which you can watch below.

Our U12s went to Ypres in Belgium as part of the Christmas Truce Tournament. Our U19s played Barcelona in spring and the U13s went to Munich. All these stand out in my mind, but there are dozens more. When you speak to graduates, whether they’re in our first team, another Football League club’s or if they’ve left the professional game, these trips are what they really remember. They are life-changing experiences.

One moment in particular will stay with me for the rest of my life. Watching one of our young lads, Joe, deliver a poem he had written himself at the site of the Munich Air Disaster on the 65^th anniversary of the crash was extraordinary. It was a privilege to be there at all. Anyone who hasn’t and can should aim to visit the site on the anniversary once in their life. To then see Joe read his poem in front of around 2,000 supporters was one of the most amazing moments of my year. He is an ordinary boy with extraordinary dreams and doing extraordinary things along the way to achieving those dreams. Moments like this often go unmentioned and are hard to measure, really, but they happen so regularly and are the real reason our staff are so passionate about working with young people.