Football evolves quicker than any other sport and Manchester United enthusiasts will have gauged that from contrasting the midfield triumvirates of their last two triumphant FA Youth Cup sides.
Ravel Morrison, the conductor of the Class of 2011, was a maverick while Paul Pogba and Ryan Tunnicliffe were two steely box-to-box midfielders.
Eleven years later, Kobbie Mainoo, Dan Gore and the cherub Sam Mather were pocket dynamos whose passing patterns could have been mistaken for teenage midfielders from Barcelona or Ajax.
Fifteen years ago, Barcelona emerged as one of the great football teams in living memory and signalled a shift in how clubs built midfielders.
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