FA Youth Cup final might be the highlight or a springboard for Manchester United

The FA Youth Cup final drew 67,500 and broke the FA website; while youth success doesn’t always mean a glittering career, it’s all valuable experience.

It is a curiosity of the end of this season that one of the highest attendances for a match in the whole of Europe this week – a quick search shows only Bayern Munich v Stuttgart will have exceeded it – was for an under-18s match. Manchester United v Nottingham Forest in this year’s FA Youth Cup final at Old Trafford was watched by a crowd of almost 67,500 people, which would be extremely substantial for any match, never mind a youth match.

This record attendance absolute smashes the previous record for this competition, which was set for a semi-final between Arsenal and Manchester United at The Emirates Stadium in March 2007, when 38,187 people turned out to see Arsenal win by a goal to nil. The team sheets alone tell a story of the nature of professional football, since the players involved are now all in their early thirties and are either heading towards the twilight years of their careers or have already packed up playing.

Of the 32 players who made up the first teams and benches for this match, only three could not reach the baseline of celebrity – having their own Wikipedia page. Of the rest, although none were still playing for the teams that they were playing for in 2007 and 21 never made an appearance for the first team of the club they represented at this level, 21 of the 32 are still playing somewhere, which is impressive, considering that they are now in their early thirties and 15 years have passed.

Familiar names did play. Kieran Gibbs started for Arsenal, while current Juventus goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny, who played 132 games for Arsenal and has been