Nick Cox: We know our purpose

The event recognised the successes of our young people over the last 12 months.

In order for a talent development programme to provide the right environment for young people, it’s important that players, parents and staff are clearly aligned as to what success might look like for each of the participants.

The staff at the Academy are clear on our purpose. It is to support young people in their pursuit of excellence on the football pitch. And we are passionate about ensuring each individual reaches their full potential. Through their love of football, we are committed to providing an education for children that is life-enriching and life-changing.

What’s our measure of success? Well, for some, the pursuit of excellence will underpin a career in professional football. Indeed, the children we work with all dream of playing for Manchester United. And we encourage them to dream because history tells us that it can be their reality, but we are also realistic about how hard it is to play in the Premier League.

And so that isn’t the only version of success we focus on. Reaching your full potential is about more than just refining your football skill.

Every young person’s association with our programme should lead to significant personal growth and character development, the honing of skills that are transferable and become the foundations for success in all walks of adult life, friendships, a love of the game that lasts forever, health and wellbeing benefits, the opportunity to travel the worlds, and the chance to make some amazing memories.

With this being our definition of success, it’s important that we celebrate when children demonstrate progress in these areas. Our annual Celebration Event does that. We recognise that some children have experienced success in other sports, or showed excellent application in education. We also praise those who have shown great personal growth or overcome significant personal challenges and others who have given back to their communities.

Demonstrating how long this kind of work has been ongoing, several members of our Alumni chose to attend and show their support for the event; each of them demonstrating that the skills learned through football during their time with us they were preparing themselves for success in adult life. Some of these Alumni were being recognised with awards, but others simply wanted to be there. They are always welcome at the Academy and part of our family.

As for those Alumni awards, one went to Craig Cathcart, who had an excellent career and earned 75 caps for Northern Ireland. The other recognised one of the most unique career paths we’ve seen from a graduate in Phil Mulryne.

Phil made five appearances under Sir Alex Ferguson at United in the late 1990s. After a successful time at Norwich City and then retirement, he became a priest and now lives in a monastery. Phil attributed many of the values he was taught at the Academy with helping him find success in a completely different area of life.

This all made for a special day, made more so by a visit from Sir Alex Ferguson, who shared his thoughts on youth development, gave our players some invaluable advice and also presented Dave Bushell with an award to mark his 30 years’ service to the club. Congratulations, Dave!

Sir Alex was chaperoned on the day by one of our young players, providing him and his family with more lifelong memories. To see more from Sir Alex’s visit and the celebration event, I recommend you watch the latest instalment in the ‘Lifeblood’ series. This next short film, called ‘Lifeblood: United at Heart’, is a heart-warming watch. It comes out on Thursday 13 February.

There were plenty of football achievements to celebrate, too. We took some time to recognise three senior debuts for the first team (graduates 249, 250 and 251), for Omari Forson, Ethan Wheatley and Toby Collyer. Ethan’s, in particular, is worthy of recognition not just because of the hard work gone into his journey from a young age at United, but because it was that landmark 250th. That’s incredible and we should never stop shouting about it.

We had a total of 15 Academy graduates feature in first-team matchday squads, with ten of those contributing minutes. In total, our graduates delivered an incredible 11,835 mins in our first team last season, 40% more than our next closest rivals.

We celebrated the achievements of some of these graduates in particular, from Alejandro Garnacho, Scott McTominay and Marcus Rashford hitting appearance landmarks (100, 250 and 400, respectively) to Alejandro and Kobbie Mainoo scoring in the FA Cup final and representing their countries in major international finals, too. They were both then nominated for the Golden Boy award, having been two of only three teenagers to play more than 2,500 minutes across Europe’s top five leagues. Alejandro’s bicycle kick against Everton was also worthy of the Puskas Award.

As well as Kobbie’s influence on England’s route to the EURO 2024 final, we were proud to see graduate Tom Heaton join the Three Lions camp. Later in the year, Angel Gomes made his senior debut for England. In terms of current Academy players, more than 40 of them received youth international call-ups during 2024.

Finally, while individual development is our focus rather than results, we always play to win, and, of course, you can only have a celebration event if you have something to celebrate. That doesn’t just mean trophies, but a whole programme that has allowed our young players to flourish. Well done to our staff.

That being said, many of our age groups picked up trophies in 2024 and these are worthy of celebration. Most notably, our U18s had an incredible season, winning the northern and national league titles and the Premier League Cup.

As for 2025, it’s only a month old and already we have seen several teams compete in European tournaments. We’ve hosted another round of the FA Youth Cup, the U10s have won a futsal tournament, the U13s reached the national futsal final, the U17s have reached the semi-final of the Premier League Cup, the U14s have worked with City to recognise National Holocaust Memorial Day, and we have placed several players out on loan.

And at the start of February, we had one of our proudest weeks as players across several age groups were involved in commemorating the 67th anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster. Jacob Devaney and Tyler Fredricson got up to speak in front of thousands of people at the matchday memorial service before the Premier League game against Crystal Palace. Their words on the enduring legacy of Munich on today’s Academy were powerful and delivered eloquently. As was a poem read by young Josep from our Under-13s, when speaking at the memorial service on 6 February itself.

Our U13s learn about the Munich Air Disaster every year and this month have prevented their learnings to counterparts from Liverpool, Middlesborough and Bishop Auckland. This not only builds their knowledge of the club’s history and helps them to understand the responsibility they have, it also develops their confidence as public speakers. We’re proud of all those who spoke over the last week, whether it was in front of several thousand or a group of 20. They have represented United and the Academy well.

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, I am confident that 2025 will be successful and that we’ll be hosting yet another incredible celebration event in January 2026. I have every faith that together we will continue to show the work ethic, creativity and resilience required to ensure that we continue to deliver an outstanding programme for our players.