Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, the Nevilles, and Butt. They are part of the ‘Class of 92’: a cohort of Man Utd youth players that achieved enormous collective and individual success in and beyond the game. They require no further introduction. Yet what about Casper, Thornley, McKee, O’Kane, Switzer, or Burke? These names are less familiar, yet they graced the same pitch and teamsheets as their more vaunted fellow members of the Class of 92 in the early-to-mid 1990s. Some may know these latter names by association with Giggs et al., as comparative hard luck stories, or as the answer to a pub trivia question.
In Class of 92, author Ian Marshall tells the collective story of all the indomitable, unsettled, and cruelly curtailed young talents who made up the Class of 92. Through his interviews with the lesser-known members of the team, Marshall spins a fascinating narrative that is very diplomatic to each member, and doesn’t go overboard in throwing plaudits or burnishing the reputations of those selected members who won it all. As such, Class of 92 reads as a dispassionate account of how members of the Class of 92 contemporaneously reacted to, and either adapted or folded to, the extraordinary high demands placed on them by youth team coach Eric Harrison.
“They’ve got to be in love with football…It’s normal for lads of fifteen, sixteen and seventeen to switch off occasionally, but we’re not looking for normal.” Paul McGuinness (pg. 3)
Naturally, GBSNB (for brevity, I’ll shorten the collective presence of Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, the Nevilles, and Butt to this acronym) gets relatively more attention because of their sustained success, and this becomes obvious in the latter chapters as other members of the Class of 92 slew off and away from Man Utd to pastures new for better opportunities.
Yet this focus on GBSNB does not diminish the contributing anecdotes of Colin McKee, Kevin Pilkington, George Switzer, Chris Casper, Ben Thornley, and Raphael Burke among others. All being special players in their own right (Thornley was suggested to be one of the best of the Class of 92), we can see that they do not look back in anger or regret on their relative lack of on-field success or longevity. As Class of 92 was first published in 2012, it looks back at the Class of 92 before they all retired and before some of them took over Salford City in 2014. This serendipitous publication date largely mitigates fawning retrospectives of GBSNB post-retirement and gives more room for the stories of Casper, Thornley, Burke et al. to breathe, settle, and resound.
Nevertheless, Marshall skilfully weaves player biographical snippets throughout each chapter framed by each round of the Class of 92’s successful tilt toward 1991-92 FA Youth Cup glory. These chapters also feature plenty of names of opposition youth outfits from the past that will have you going down a Wikipedia rabbit-hole: Niall Thompson, Adie Mike, and George Ndah, anyone?
“Players must also have a capacity, and even enthusiasm, for hard work…beyond that, apprentices are also gaining in strength as they mature, learning how to perform to a consistently high standard and understanding their role in the team. It is a lot to take on in a short period—the world of professional football is a results-driven business that cannot afford to wait too long. Because of this, some players hit their ceiling very early on, while others have the priceless ability to go on improving. The football careers of Giggs and Burke show how quickly the paths can diverge, even between the ages of 14 and 18.” (pg. 107)
What I particularly like about Class of 92 is its retrospective analysis of the genesis of a youth intake—the Class of 92’s wild success notwithstanding. Watching a young tyro come up through the ranks of our club is a special joy that grows out of personal and in-group identity, geographical pride, and the tribal insularity of us versus them. These qualities are crystallised within the spectre of that young player clocking his or her first professional minutes. One of us, from the ground-up. Their names somehow stay with us, no matter how transitory their presence in the team may have been. We wonder about them, and how they’re getting on.
Of course, we can’t do a retrospective analysis of every youth intake of our club over the years. It would be impracticable. But with the Class of 92, Marshall has hit on a mainline vein of supporter pride that is rarely tapped into in non-fiction long-form despite the minutiae of youth management present in iterations of Football Manager and FIFA games. In having a hand in youngsters’ development, we want to see how players tumble out in the final wash.
Nowadays, the academy transfer market is a shadowy one to many fans due to the likelihood of a club’s top talent being poached by bigger clubs, often without warning and adequate compensation. This stacking of talent is a rich club’s game that many PL clubs—let alone Football League clubs—struggle to retain local and regional talent. This hyper-elite pathway to professionalism virtually guarantees at least a decent football career for youngsters in any of the four English leagues due to the raised standard of individual talent and application honed and shaped by peer competition and youth coaching and support that is beyond anything seen in the 1990s and 2000s.
This is why Class of 92 is an important and worthwhile read for all football fans: it outlines a blueprint of wholesome, on-field sustainability via a talent pipeline that we crave for as it appeals to our local supporter identity. Where many current top academy models exist as a late-capitalist means to identify ‘assets’ to on-sell for profit later, the book would also greatly appeal to supporters of teams further down in the FA pyramid that rely on their youth academies to nurture local talent as a means for existential survival. As such, Class of 92 acts as a manifesto, a retrospective, and a powerful rejoinder to Alan Hansen’s oft-repeated quote of “You can’t win anything with kids.”
“The important thing wasn’t being at United. It was working hard enough to make sure they’d let me stay there.” David Beckham (pg. 29)
STARS: 4/5
UNDER 20: An engrossing retrospective that covers all the angles and unknown corners of the much-celebrated ‘Class of 92’.
FULL-TIME SCORE: The young team, put together only recently, play with a verve and flair beyond their years to romp to a 3-0 win, and in the process, usher in a new spirit of hope for the club’s future fortunes.
RELATED READING: Tackled: The Class of 92 Star Who Never Got to Graduate by Ben Thornley (2018); How Not to be a Football Millionaire by Keith Gillespie (2013)
Dispatches from Row-Z 