Manchester United don’t get a lot wrong.
We’ll gloss over the fortunes of the first team just now, which will no doubt be a fleeting aberration, but generally speaking there isn’t a football club in the world that is run better.
I’m not talking about the Glazers or the managing directors. It’s more the football operation that has been embedded by Sir Alex Ferguson.
United have got a history of getting the right people in the right positions and keeping them there.
Take Brian McClair, for example.
He’s exactly the sort of ex-footballer you would have expected to become a manager long before now. He played at Old Trafford for over a decade, has 30 caps for his country and had a brief post-playing career role as Brian Kidd’s number two at Blackburn Rovers. Then, when he returned to United he became involved in the youth set-up.
All the boxes are ticked – Scottish, played under Fergie and coached under Fergie. It should have made him a certainty to be employed as a boss of a first team at English Championship level, at the very least.
But comments made by McClair show why United have been so successful at bringing through their own talent, and why by and large staff like him don’t wish their life away and covet other posts.
“There are now two distinct paths post-career,” he said. “You have the professional side, and the education or teaching side. I am happy doing what I am doing, and it makes a big difference if it makes you happy.
“Now you can see a career in youth development; traditionally you got a job as a youth or maybe reserve coach, then first-team coach and then perhaps you fancied being a manager.
“We try to avoid that sort of situation. Paul McGuiness is the under-18 coach here and I would like him to be the under-18 coach, as long as he is enjoying it, for his whole career.”
As two fellow Scots proved last week, though, youth academy head McClair, McGuinness and others like him at Carrington are the exceptions. Scott Booth and Duncan Ferguson, who gave up coaching youngsters to work with senior pros, are the rule.
Most clubs, and most ex-players turned coaches, still see career progression as leaving youth development behind to chase the holy grail of first team management.
That’s not meant as a criticism of Booth for taking over at Stenhousemuir after being part of Mark Wotte’s team at Hampden, or Ferguson for joining Roberto Martinez’s inner circle.
That’s the career path they would like to follow, and nobody can blame them for it.
I do think it’s a shame though that the ingrained football culture is that if you show up well coaching kids, then you will get “promoted” to a senior job.
Martinez confirmed as much when he spoke about Ferguson’s Goodison Park switch.
“He’s developing into a really exciting coach. He’s been a big influence in the work he’s done with the under-18s and I do feel we need his influence in the first-team environment. I think he will become someone very special in that first-team structure.”
There’s no getting away from the inference of Martinez’s words that one job is more important than the other.
I would suggest it’s the wrong way round, and a club that relies on the Wayne Rooneys and Ross Barkleys they can guide and improve through the age-groups, should know that.
There might be no answer to it.
For every McClair who either has no desire to go back into football at the sharp end, there will be a 100 of his peers who crave it.
But I would be confident that if more clubs adopted the United mind-set that the best youth coaches should be cherished and protected in position, rather than the old school work-your-way-up to a bigger job ethos, there wouldn’t be such a talent drain from under-age football coaching.