Meeting Rooney and a message from Mainoo - Manchester United academy success goes beyond the pitch

Was 2023 a successful year for Manchester United? If you were at Old Trafford on Saturday, you would find it hard to argue otherwise.

For the second year in a row, the club celebrated their illustrious academy program with an annual event that gave young hopefuls recognition of what they had achieved as well as further motivation to fuel their dreams of perhaps making it one day.

It was a year that saw Marcus Rashford score a Carabao Cup winner at Wembley, Scott McTominay captain the first-team and Alejandro Garnacho score 'that goal' against Everton. Nine academy graduates represented the first-team squad; three of them made their debuts and United continued their remarkable record of having a homegrown player in every senior squad since Saturday 30 October 1937.

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There's a lot more to the academy system than just those who go on to make an appearance for the first team, though that is ultimately the standard by which they are externally ranked. A by-product of a club that can count academy products as almost half of those to ever represent them.

"Every football club has an academy to try to produce young players to go and play for the first team," Director of the Academy, Nick Cox told The Manchester Evening News. "That's originally why Manchester United had an academy, because it was the best way of creating a team from an economic point of view. But at this football club, the pressures are historic. The youth program is symbolic of our origins and the importance of youth in our darkest days."

Those routes of the academy were hammered home on a joyous yet