Jose Mourinho's last Manchester United tour squad offers lesson to 12 academy graduates

Plenty of Manchester United's youngsters would have had their eye on this summer as an opportunity to impress Erik ten Hag and his new-look coaching staff, with a dozen academy graduates on the plane to Los Angeles on Wednesday.

International tournament summers always present a challenge to clubs trying to get up to speed before the new season, but the flipside of that is the opportunities they offer young players in a first-team environment. Those 12 players will get to spend an intense period training and living with the first-team squad, as well as playing in big games that get the big treatment on the other side of the pond.

For some, it will be a chance to pick the brains of players who have had the kind of careers they dream of and the opportunity to impress in a pre-season friendly, but with the knowledge that this might be the only tour they go on. Of those youngsters, how many will forge a reasonable first-team career at Old Trafford? If even one manages it that will probably be considered a success.

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Others will no doubt have success in the Premier League and for some the journey will continue lower down the ladder. It's instructive to look at the last proper pre-season tour in a tournament year, which would be 2018 given the disruption to the calendar caused by Covid.

On that occasion, Jose Mourinho picked seven teenagers for the five-game tour of the States. None of them still play for United and while collectively they made 162 appearances for the club - that figure is skewed by the 129 made by Mason Greenwood.

The forward is the standout name on this