Busby Babes

I mean, we won in 1968 the Champions League back then.

We also had the Busby Babes.

You also had these historic moments throughout our history.

We had lean years, but in the '90s and 2000 United ran everything.

Um, and, and it was Manchester in 1968 when they lifted the first European Cup by an English club, uh, the year after Celtic won it.

Go back and listen to that episode if you haven't, the Lisbon Lions and then the Busby Babes.

We're then fast-forwarding to Sir Alex Ferguson's appointment in the 1980s and 1990, this major winning moment.

But obviously everyone who knows Manchester United today, um, even young children who were born long after Sir Alex Ferguson left the club, know who he is.

He saw his friends die He saw them lifeless next to him.

He was a hero of Manchester United's youth teams, which became the Busby Babes, and then most of them died.

And he, he carried this guilt, survivor's guilt.

Why me? Why do I get to experience this? After United won the European Cup in '68, he didn't celebrate 'cause he- the weight of what he'd been through was, was too heavy.

I think as well with him, when you heard him talk about Manchester United, it just resonated.

How should Manchester United play? The way he described the attacking style, the entertainment, the youth, the bravery, his vision, the way he talks about it.

And whether that comes from him or actually it comes from Matt Busby's vision of what the Busby Babes were, or what the teams were that he built, or that Ferguson continued, ultimately it's that, isn't it? We still We want that.

We still want to see that.

So, like one day in the summer holidays, my dad would take me down and we'd wait for the players to come out of the Cliff, uh, which is the old training ground for anyone who doesn't know.

It's the iconic sort of Busby Babes and, um, Fergie's Fledglings class of '92, uh, training ground.

And basically, I was quite small at this point 'cause I was really young and I couldn't get to the front to get Cantona's signature, and it was only Cantona's signature that I wanted.

So I waited a bit further back, and he basically stopped his car, wound the window down- Mm-hmm ... signs the autograph, gives it back to me, and I just

What f- what football needs to do, as, you know, in, in the wider community sense, all the fans go, "That asterisk has always been there against every single trophy.

We've all known it." We need to s- we need to be saying to the people who br- who, who, who talk about our game on the TV and in the media, "Please stop talking about them like, like they're one of the great teams that were built, like the Busby Babes, like Shankly's team, like Paisley's team, like, like Pep Guardiola's Barcelona.

Stop talking about them like that." Football...

As long as football wants to keep talking about them in that nonsense way, as if it all just, as if they just organically put this side, that, that side and that squad together, it's, it's going to be same as it ever was.

yeah.

Captain of the Busby Babes would undoubtedly be higher if he'd not lost his life at Munich.

It is a tragedy that the lads lost their lives at Munich, but I've got to make a judgment.

And if you've only played a certain number of games, then you've only played a certain number of games.

No, it's actually before your early days and memories, but in the days of Best Law and Charlton, whom I watched a lot of, you weren't short of great players at that particular time, but that was what Busby liked.

He built a team kind of without stars, who became stars in the Busby Babes, but in the emergence of Best Law and Charlton in the 60s, He had three players who completely overshadowed David Sadler and John Fitzpatrick and Tony Dunn and John Aston.

There was no comparison.

He

These are rewarding things following a football club.

Can Manchester City fans train anything like that now? No.

Or Manchester United fans who have this great academy? You know, that first side, the Furby babes with the Scholes, the Neville brothers, Beckham, Nicky Butt.

There was a joy in that, wasn't there? Seeing these young players emerge.

This badge, the history, you know, the 1968 European Cup final, sir.

Busby Babes, Jimmy Murphy, Sir Alex Ferguson.

We go down the list of why this club is so freaking special and these guys don't get it and get them gone out of my club.

That's how I feel about it.

Famously in the '50s it was the best.

The Busby Babes came through, then you had the Class of '92, and then there was a period of decline.

Manchester United became complacent.

In, in 2015, I wrote a, a very critical piece about the state of the youth system because rivals, especially Manchester City, but also Liverpool, Everton, you've got a lot of clubs competing in a very small geographic area.