Fergie's Fledglings the best ever golden generation
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Fergie's Fledglings the best ever golden generation of footballers
If, as a group of young players, you get given a nickname, then you must be good.
We saw it with the Sir Matt Busby 's Busby Babes in the 1950s and Bobby Charlton , Duncan Edwards , Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor and the rest of Manchester United’s young team would probably have gone on to be the greatest but for the tragedy of Munich.
Wilf McGuinness firmly believes that side would have been the Real Madrid of the 1960s and they were on the cusp of greatness before February 6, 1958.
We saw it again in 1967 with Celtic’s Lisbon Lions , the first British team to do what the Babes would surely have done and win the European Cup.
Bar Willie Wallace, they had all come through the ranks at Celtic and Jimmy Johnstone, Billy McNeill and their team-mates were all born within a 30-mile radius of Celtic Park.
That Celtic team remains one of Britain’s finest and during that record-breaking season in 1966-67, they won every trophy going - the Scottish League, the Scottish Cup, the Scottish League Cup on top of the European Cup.
In modern times, no group of players compares to another bunch of kids with a nickname – Fergie’s Fledglings.
United’s 1992 FA Youth Cup-winning side looks more like an all-star select for a testimonial rather than a bunch of teenagers who all came through at the same time at Old Trafford.
Ten of that side went on to play for United’s first team. Three – Gary Neville, David Beckham and Nicky Butt – became England stars.
Ryan Giggs? Well no-one needs reminding what he has gone on to achieve.
And although Robbie Savage and Keith Gillespie never made it at Old Trafford, they still carved out successful Premier League careers and became internationals for Wales and Northern Ireland respectively.
The following year, Paul Scholes played in the final when United lost to a talented Leeds side, which would bear such fruit for David O’Leary.
By 1995, a certain P Neville was the star as youth coach Eric Harrison’s side beat Tottenham on penalties in the final to lift the Cup again.
It’s what that group of players have done subsequently which proves they were the greatest crop of kids to come through at any one club.
Sure, Arsene Wenger has brought through some talented kids at Arsenal and Liverpool have produced Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard.
West Ham love to talk about The Academy of Football and how they won the World Cup in 1966 with Moore, Peters and Hurst and have churned out Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole and Glen Johnson in recent times.
While those clubs operate a production line of talent, they can’t match the concentration, which came through en masse at United in the early 90s.
Fergie Fledglings have formed the heart of every successful United side since their 1996 Double winners and the peerless Giggs is still a force at 36.
He and Scholes played in their 2008 Champions League Final success against Chelsea in an illustration of their longevity.
They really have proved to Alan Hansen that you can win plenty with kids.