Why Man United's Class of 92 may never happen again

Forget about allegiances for a second. Yes — Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich may be ruling your life every weekend — but for a second, forget about it. Think the bigger picture, think football. The Class of 92 is certainly a documentary closely looking at Manchester United’s phenomenal success with a bunch of kids who graduated from their academy — but the lessons to learn from it apply to global football in a time where results are your only marker, money your only means of survival and managers are reduced to mere stop-gap solutions even at clubs which have stood for a hundred years. Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary and Phil Neville take the viewer into a journey of how footballers are developed at a club like United — the inside story of a time when people wrote off the power of youth academies only to see United emerge as a major force in Europe. “The most amazing part is that it may never happen again — six kids supporting a club, ending up in the first team and winning the treble. With the way football is going today, it may never happen again,” Gary Neville says in the closing stages of the 95-minute film. [caption id=“attachment_1279681” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Gary and Phil Neville at the premier of The Class of 92. Getty Images[/caption] While he was referring to British football, this is something that the top leagues across the world may not see again. Barcelona’s team — Carles Puyol, Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets and the rest have delivered exceptional success to the Catalans — but they remain one of the only clubs able to regularly push through their youngsters and mix them up with buys like Neymar and David Villa. Arsenal tried to replicate United’s model and went trophy-less for eight years — the fans eventually lost patience and clamoured for expensive purchases. Madrid and Barcelona contribute 56% of the total revenue of the La Liga — the rest of the clubs mere minions knocked down on either club’s road to the La Liga. The grim truth is that while the top clubs eat their half of the pie, lower division clubs are suffering, closing down as faith turns to hope and hope to dust. The aggregate operating losses of England’s second division clubs worsened to £147 million in 2011/12; a long slide from an aggregate operating loss of £35 million back in 2003/04. These clubs have become feeders to bigger clubs where youth players simply vanish due to the onslaught of bigger names. About the documentary itself, it’s a poignant reminder of the heroics of the six lads who went on to fulfill the legacy that the Busby Babes were building and which ended in tragedy. The opening scenes are emotional, heart-warming and brilliantly illustrated in the close-up expressions of all the six players as they are recorded watching the video of the 1999 Champions League final. “We can still smell his pipe as we walk past the office,” says Giggs about Busby — the manager who survived the Munich disaster to lead United to European triumph just 10 years later. “He was there,” adds Scholes, who for a man who was known to sit in a dark room with the television on during Manchester United tours, is surprisingly refreshing in the documentary. Every player is introduced with him doing a trademark move — Giggs dribbling the ball like a gazelle, Beckham putting a ball through a rubber tire hung from the bar 25 yards away, Scholes finding a hoop placed on the pitch with a lobbed pass, Butt attempting an overhead kick and Phil Neville doing double stepovers — something he attempted in a match before Roy Keane asked him to stop f***ing around. Scholes, Beckham and Gary go on to Old Trafford for the documentary, where they discuss their goals and Gary says, “(Micheal) Owen scored against us that day with a downward header right? And he ended up playing for us too…” before moving into the dressing room as they sit in their own places. The scenes are just enormous in time-scale, taking you from the FA Youth Cup final to the whole class of 92 playing a casual match in 2013 — from past to present to past and present again with inputs from the great Eric Cantona and Zinedine Zidane in it. There’s a stage where you come to appreciate the greatness of rivals too — a United fan for example knows that Arsenal are currently the best team in England — that Liverpool may well finish ahead of them. The mature Chelsea fan will know that Stoke gave them a good game at the weekend — this is a film for those who can appreciate the story of six players, the manager Alex Ferguson and the youth coach Eric Harrison — for those who can accept that it was something stunning that took place in 1999. From showing you how football worked that day, and from how it works today to tales of Ferguson ruling with his fear and the players buying their first cars (Beckham spent all his money on leather seats) — the Class of 92 is an absolute must-watch for every football fan out there. As Cantona says, “it’s… unbelievable, beautiful, the perfect-script. Only sport can give you these moments.” In modern-day football, we can only hope to see something like this replicated. The Class of 92 released on 29 November in the UK The writer tweets @TheFalseNo9