awesome dawson
Mitchell Thomas
Manchester's cold war
By Tom Fordyce
2 March 2017
It is a wet winter Saturday on a muddy playing field in an unprepossessing part of south Manchester. The river Mersey slides past behind a row of trees planted to provide shelter from the wind, chill gusts cutting through the gaps where saplings were torn out by local kids to sell on elsewhere.
On the pitches, children of every size are playing football: four- and five-year-olds being taught the game, three teams of under-nines, the same again of under-10s. Dogs are being walked, and dogs are being allowed to do what dogs naturally do. By the changing rooms, a woman collects subs of £2 a child, less if they have brothers or sisters playing and the extra cost would mean one of them missing out.
Old Trafford lies four miles and several worlds away, across the flat suburban streets of Stretford to the north-west. The Etihad Stadium is six miles to the north-east, beyond Rusholme and Ardwick, new oil-money-bright in an old coal town. And yet these council fields are the new front line in the battle for supremacy between United and City, and these kids – shivering, laughing, falling over and pushing past – are the trophies both clubs are fighting for.
The reasons are not hard to find. Inside the squat changing room, away from the damp patch on the ceiling where the flat roof leaks, a trophy cabinet spills its silverware on to shelves and filing cabinets either side. On the opposite wall are photos of the young-boys-made-good who won them.
Marcus Rashford, striker for United and England. Danny Welbeck, United, Arsenal and England. Wes Brown, Jesse Lingard. Ravel Morrison - made good, made bad, as innocent here aged eight as he would ever be.
On the ground
Out by the pitches, standing apart from the parents and coaches, are the scouts sent to entice the next generation, advance troops in the crusade for hearts and minds of future supporters. Club tracksuits on, pen and paper busy, a golden future in their hands, an escape theirs to offer.
“It sounds laughable, but they're looking at kids at three and four years old,” says Dave Horrocks, chairman of Fletcher Moss Rangers, the little youth side based here that has produced big talent again and again.
“When you see a kid of three running with the ball, the scout will enquire what other club they might be at. It's comical, really, because these kids have only been walking for 18 months.
“People have asked me since Marcus hit the headlines – can you see a player at five years old? And there's no way you can. They've got other things going on in their mind.
“You can see if someone's got a good build, got a bit of pace. But a professional footballer? Ridiculous.”
Horrocks, now a grandfather, has seen his own children and now theirs too wear the yellow and blue shirts of Fletcher Moss. He has been giving up his weekends and week-nights for more than 30 years, a man in love with the game, a coach whose concern for the boys and girls out on the pitches goes beyond football.
“The term that I would use for the majority here is street kids," he says. “They've grown up on the streets and they're tough. A lot of the parents haven't got two ha'pennies to rub together.
“We try to give the kids something to look forward to. But it's getting worse. It's crazy, it really is.
“Kids can't be contracted to a club until the year of their ninth birthday, but they can be promised things.”
“It can be a heartbreaker. A lot of parents see bright lights, big stars, Rolls-Royces, not just for their kids one day but for themselves. They get the wrong impression of what's on the table.
“They're made to think they're part of that organisation. But they’re not, not until their name is on that piece of paper when they're eight.
“I've asked kids, 'Who do you play for?' And they’ll say, 'Emirates Marketing Project,' or 'Manchester United'. And they don't. They go to a development centre.”
The Fletcher Moss Rangers trophy cabinet is a testimony to the talent they have produced
An arms race
A few years back, the sporting civil war in this city was played out in headlines and big statements. City, in the first flush of investment from Abu Dhabi, paying for a huge “Welcome to Manchester” billboard on Deansgate featuring the face of former United striker Carlos Tevez; United rising to the bait, Sir Alex Ferguson hitting out at the “noisy neighbours” and “a small club with a small mentality”.
Now, on the surface at least, all is calm. Neither club tends towards public grandstanding. Both have owners who prefer to remain in the background. Open hostility has been replaced by easy detente.
On the surface. Elsewhere – on playing-fields around the north-west, on school playgrounds, in classrooms and in back gardens - it is more intense than ever before.
There are the tiddlers, potential future players, seen by both as future customers.
There are the secondary school-age stars who move between each other's youth set-ups.
And there are the scouts and coaches – Dave Harrison, eight years at City, recently headhunted by United to do for the club's youth recruitment what he had done at City and Leeds before that; his former colleagues Ronnie Cusick and Lyndon Tomlinson, enticed across town to work alongside him.
“When City got their investment, when they built the Etihad campus, they were getting the best of everything,” says Dave Hobson, scout for United from 2001 to 2014, now head of the Professional Football Scouts' Association.
“We all had a meeting with Alex Ferguson. A bottle of wine on the table. And he always praised us for what we did.
But what can you do – what can you offer someone who’s got better than what you have? What do you offer that person to come to work for you? You write a cheque.”
A lot of cheques are being written. A large number City's part-time scouts and coaches are rumoured to have had their wages doubled. United have responded by hiring even more – men on the ground, coaches at their Aon training complex in Carrington, set out in the green lanes between the M60 orbital motorway and the M62.
“Scouts are the Cinderellas of a football club,” says Hobson, who at one point had a player of his in every age group at United from under-nines to the first-team squad. “They find the player, the agent finds out their address.
“Nobody can run a football club unless you've got scouts to bring the players in. You can't coach players if you don't have any.
“But it's become an arms race.”
St Bede's College is a 140-year-old private school in leafy Whalley Range, mid-way between Fletcher Moss and the Etihad. It costs £3,595 per term to have a child educated there.
City will now fund those fees for any boy signed to their academy, all the way through to GCSE exams, even if they are released at a younger age.
Many would see that as a good thing. Last summer the rate of A* or A grades at GCSE level at the school was 42%. Better to educate kids than to develop only their sporting abilities. Others says that it is too much of a good thing.
It is also an increasingly potent weapon. Twenty-five years on from the Class of '92, when United’s home-grown legion transformed the balance of power in English football, City's drive for young minds is turning the region pale blue.
Nine of the 11 starters in City's 2015 FA Youth Cup final team that lost to Chelsea were born in the city. Two-thirds of City academy players are now from the Manchester area.
“Ten years ago all our kids were in Manchester United or Liverpool shirts,” says Matt Wackett, who coaches the under-fives, sixes and sevens at Egerton Football Club in Cheshire, just south of Manchester's urban sprawl. “Now most of the kids are in Emirates Marketing Project shirts.
“We can be quite cynical about these clubs and the way they are going about seeking talent. The emphasis is on casting the net far and wide, of bringing in as much talent as possible that will then be funnelled down as the years go on, whittled down to half a dozen kids.
They are looking for the best players to make their club better. But it's also about exposure within the community. That's going to inspire fans and grow the name and the brand.”
City have recently invited Wackett to bring his under-fives in to their Etihad campus for a coaching session with their staff. That's 30 kids, of all abilities, some barely able to kick a ball.
“It's an example of winning the hearts and minds of parents as well as the kids,” says Wackett. “They have to invest in the parents, because ultimately they're the ones who have to take the kids there once or twice a week.
“City do that pretty regularly for clubs all around the north-west, invite groups in for a coached session, see the campus and its facilities.
“It's become a real aspirational thing – 'I want to be in a Emirates Marketing Project shirt'. It's very attractive to the kids. If the same kids were asked if they'd like to go into United, some of them, in a childish manner, would have gone, 'Urgh, no, we don't want to go there…'”
Changing of the guard
By Tom Fordyce
2 March 2017
It is a wet winter Saturday on a muddy playing field in an unprepossessing part of south Manchester. The river Mersey slides past behind a row of trees planted to provide shelter from the wind, chill gusts cutting through the gaps where saplings were torn out by local kids to sell on elsewhere.
On the pitches, children of every size are playing football: four- and five-year-olds being taught the game, three teams of under-nines, the same again of under-10s. Dogs are being walked, and dogs are being allowed to do what dogs naturally do. By the changing rooms, a woman collects subs of £2 a child, less if they have brothers or sisters playing and the extra cost would mean one of them missing out.
Old Trafford lies four miles and several worlds away, across the flat suburban streets of Stretford to the north-west. The Etihad Stadium is six miles to the north-east, beyond Rusholme and Ardwick, new oil-money-bright in an old coal town. And yet these council fields are the new front line in the battle for supremacy between United and City, and these kids – shivering, laughing, falling over and pushing past – are the trophies both clubs are fighting for.
The reasons are not hard to find. Inside the squat changing room, away from the damp patch on the ceiling where the flat roof leaks, a trophy cabinet spills its silverware on to shelves and filing cabinets either side. On the opposite wall are photos of the young-boys-made-good who won them.
Marcus Rashford, striker for United and England. Danny Welbeck, United, Arsenal and England. Wes Brown, Jesse Lingard. Ravel Morrison - made good, made bad, as innocent here aged eight as he would ever be.
On the ground
Out by the pitches, standing apart from the parents and coaches, are the scouts sent to entice the next generation, advance troops in the crusade for hearts and minds of future supporters. Club tracksuits on, pen and paper busy, a golden future in their hands, an escape theirs to offer.
“It sounds laughable, but they're looking at kids at three and four years old,” says Dave Horrocks, chairman of Fletcher Moss Rangers, the little youth side based here that has produced big talent again and again.
“When you see a kid of three running with the ball, the scout will enquire what other club they might be at. It's comical, really, because these kids have only been walking for 18 months.
“People have asked me since Marcus hit the headlines – can you see a player at five years old? And there's no way you can. They've got other things going on in their mind.
“You can see if someone's got a good build, got a bit of pace. But a professional footballer? Ridiculous.”
Horrocks, now a grandfather, has seen his own children and now theirs too wear the yellow and blue shirts of Fletcher Moss. He has been giving up his weekends and week-nights for more than 30 years, a man in love with the game, a coach whose concern for the boys and girls out on the pitches goes beyond football.
“The term that I would use for the majority here is street kids," he says. “They've grown up on the streets and they're tough. A lot of the parents haven't got two ha'pennies to rub together.
“We try to give the kids something to look forward to. But it's getting worse. It's crazy, it really is.
“Kids can't be contracted to a club until the year of their ninth birthday, but they can be promised things.”
“It can be a heartbreaker. A lot of parents see bright lights, big stars, Rolls-Royces, not just for their kids one day but for themselves. They get the wrong impression of what's on the table.
“They're made to think they're part of that organisation. But they’re not, not until their name is on that piece of paper when they're eight.
“I've asked kids, 'Who do you play for?' And they’ll say, 'Emirates Marketing Project,' or 'Manchester United'. And they don't. They go to a development centre.”
The Fletcher Moss Rangers trophy cabinet is a testimony to the talent they have produced
An arms race
A few years back, the sporting civil war in this city was played out in headlines and big statements. City, in the first flush of investment from Abu Dhabi, paying for a huge “Welcome to Manchester” billboard on Deansgate featuring the face of former United striker Carlos Tevez; United rising to the bait, Sir Alex Ferguson hitting out at the “noisy neighbours” and “a small club with a small mentality”.
Now, on the surface at least, all is calm. Neither club tends towards public grandstanding. Both have owners who prefer to remain in the background. Open hostility has been replaced by easy detente.
On the surface. Elsewhere – on playing-fields around the north-west, on school playgrounds, in classrooms and in back gardens - it is more intense than ever before.
There are the tiddlers, potential future players, seen by both as future customers.
There are the secondary school-age stars who move between each other's youth set-ups.
And there are the scouts and coaches – Dave Harrison, eight years at City, recently headhunted by United to do for the club's youth recruitment what he had done at City and Leeds before that; his former colleagues Ronnie Cusick and Lyndon Tomlinson, enticed across town to work alongside him.
“When City got their investment, when they built the Etihad campus, they were getting the best of everything,” says Dave Hobson, scout for United from 2001 to 2014, now head of the Professional Football Scouts' Association.
“We all had a meeting with Alex Ferguson. A bottle of wine on the table. And he always praised us for what we did.
But what can you do – what can you offer someone who’s got better than what you have? What do you offer that person to come to work for you? You write a cheque.”
A lot of cheques are being written. A large number City's part-time scouts and coaches are rumoured to have had their wages doubled. United have responded by hiring even more – men on the ground, coaches at their Aon training complex in Carrington, set out in the green lanes between the M60 orbital motorway and the M62.
“Scouts are the Cinderellas of a football club,” says Hobson, who at one point had a player of his in every age group at United from under-nines to the first-team squad. “They find the player, the agent finds out their address.
“Nobody can run a football club unless you've got scouts to bring the players in. You can't coach players if you don't have any.
“But it's become an arms race.”
St Bede's College is a 140-year-old private school in leafy Whalley Range, mid-way between Fletcher Moss and the Etihad. It costs £3,595 per term to have a child educated there.
City will now fund those fees for any boy signed to their academy, all the way through to GCSE exams, even if they are released at a younger age.
Many would see that as a good thing. Last summer the rate of A* or A grades at GCSE level at the school was 42%. Better to educate kids than to develop only their sporting abilities. Others says that it is too much of a good thing.
It is also an increasingly potent weapon. Twenty-five years on from the Class of '92, when United’s home-grown legion transformed the balance of power in English football, City's drive for young minds is turning the region pale blue.
Nine of the 11 starters in City's 2015 FA Youth Cup final team that lost to Chelsea were born in the city. Two-thirds of City academy players are now from the Manchester area.
“Ten years ago all our kids were in Manchester United or Liverpool shirts,” says Matt Wackett, who coaches the under-fives, sixes and sevens at Egerton Football Club in Cheshire, just south of Manchester's urban sprawl. “Now most of the kids are in Emirates Marketing Project shirts.
“We can be quite cynical about these clubs and the way they are going about seeking talent. The emphasis is on casting the net far and wide, of bringing in as much talent as possible that will then be funnelled down as the years go on, whittled down to half a dozen kids.
They are looking for the best players to make their club better. But it's also about exposure within the community. That's going to inspire fans and grow the name and the brand.”
City have recently invited Wackett to bring his under-fives in to their Etihad campus for a coaching session with their staff. That's 30 kids, of all abilities, some barely able to kick a ball.
“It's an example of winning the hearts and minds of parents as well as the kids,” says Wackett. “They have to invest in the parents, because ultimately they're the ones who have to take the kids there once or twice a week.
“City do that pretty regularly for clubs all around the north-west, invite groups in for a coached session, see the campus and its facilities.
“It's become a real aspirational thing – 'I want to be in a Emirates Marketing Project shirt'. It's very attractive to the kids. If the same kids were asked if they'd like to go into United, some of them, in a childish manner, would have gone, 'Urgh, no, we don't want to go there…'”
Changing of the guard
