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Revision as of 16:05, 24 January 2008 by Futurama3002 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Youth system is a football (soccer) terminology used to refer to a particular team's youth investment program, which develops and nurtures young (often local) talent, with the vision of using them in the first team if they show enough promise,and to fill up squads in some teams with small budgets. In contrast to most sports in the United States where the collegiate system is responsible for developing young sportspeople, most football clubs take responsibility for developing their own players of the future. Some youth systems are classified as football academies.
In the footballing world Manchester United are the most famous club in recent time to develop a number of world class players from the same bunch of academy players. Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Gary Neville and Phil Neville all came through at the same time. Although Giggs was brought into the first team some years before, they were all in Uniteds youth set up at the same time. Sir Alex Ferguson at the time had so much faith in these players that he sold off, arguabley, three of United's best players in; Mark Hughes, Paul Ince and Andrei Kanchelskisin the summer of 1995. After selling these players he bought the youngsters in as first team players rather than the fringe players they were. On the opening day of that season they lost 3-1 away to Aston Villa (this is also the last time United have lost to Villa in the league). That evening on Match of the Day Alan Hansen finished his analysis of United's performance with "you'll never win anything with kids". United went on to win the League and Cup double that season and these were all involved in the team that won the treble 4 years later.
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