From Kids to Champions by Jonny Brick

Author:Jonny Brick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The 1990s: Manchester United and Liverpool

IN MAY 2021, a typical 18-year-old would sit examinations assessed by their teachers, hoping that the grades would allow entry into university.

The kids at Liverpool and Aston Villa are atypical. Those at the latter had led the club to the final of the FA Youth Cup for the first time since 2002 and thus in their own lifetime. The likes of Louie Barry and Carney Chukwuemeka are part of a gilded generation who have begun to benefit from a new training ground opened by famous fan and English FA president, the Duke of Cambridge.

As for the Liverpool scholars, they had seen the senior team become first European champions then English champions. In 2019, the class immediately above them defeated Manchester City, captained by Eric García, on penalties. That Liverpool team, as we discovered in the last chapter, included two players called Williams, Neco and Rhys, who would be on the pitch at the end of the senior team’s 4-2 win at Old Trafford in May 2021.

In a sad indictment of the modern game, the most fuss about that FA Youth Cup-winning side concerned Bobby Duncan, the number nine who had forced a move from Manchester City to the Reds and then from the Reds to Fiorentina. Duncan later blamed his agent for that ‘unnecessary’ transfer to Italy and told his social media followers that he was ‘without doubt a better player and a stronger person … it is time for my football to do the talking’.

Duncan joined Derby County early in the 2020/21 season, starting their defeat by Chorley in an FA Cup third-round tie when the first team had to self-isolate. Can he fulfil the potential he showed during that FA Youth Cup run, especially now that he has changed agents and is training with the first team who are coached by Wayne Rooney?

In his 2019 book How To Grow Old, comedian and former semi-pro footballer John Bishop talks about following Liverpool. Of course he is a fan of the new breed of footballer who pitches up at Anfield, yet he is slightly sad that no spectator ‘went to school with them, or went out with their sister, or played against them for the school team’.

With the rise of the Williamses and the promotion of many scholars to the first team, perhaps Alex Inglethorpe can offer the case for the defence.

He is a former Watford striker who played over 100 times for Leyton Orient. He briefly managed Exeter City and was in the away dugout when the non-league team prevented a Manchester United side including Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Scholes and Wes Brown from scoring in an FA Cup third-round meeting at Old Trafford in 2005.

Inglethorpe was a Tottenham coach during the Harry Redknapp era and has now been at Liverpool for a decade, first as reserve-team coach, then as under-21 team manager and now academy director. He made national news when he chose to cap the weekly salaries of the young players in 2016; he coupled this with a reduction in personnel, cutting the numbers from 240 to 170.

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