April 2018. It is game day and there is a lot of activity outside the East Stand in the Old Trafford Hall. It’s wet again in Manchester but United fans are singing in the rain after delaying Manchester City’s title win with a comeback at Etihad last week.
Destined for relegation, West Brom is in town and United must win to extend the wait for City. Fans and tourists frame the cash shot of the Sir Matt Busby statue proudly positioned in front of the sleeping giant he woke up. Others are drawn to the Trinity statue, which Busby smiles at him.
A group of French teenagers from Les Ulis, a semi-professional team 15 miles southwest of Paris, impresses Best, Law and Charlton. One of them tells a teammate that one day he will return to play for United.
The children watch United lose a tough competition and their compatriots are subdued: Paul Pogba is replaced to avoid sacking and his successor Anthony Martial is ineffective. City are champions and United is spurred on by West Brom’s Twitter account.
Martial does not forget his commitment, however. His jersey adorns the clubhouse in Les Ulis and he has invited members of the U15 team. You go with megastore bags filled with shirts and signed battle cards.
Two and a half years later, the boy who vowed to return is back; A throw-in by Gary Neville from the Trinity Statue at Hotel Football overlooking Old Trafford. Tottenham take on United at the stadium, but a teenager can’t stop grinning at the hotel. Willy Kambwala has just signed for United.
A French captain, Spaniards from Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, and an England international from Manchester City are the type of transfer window that extends beyond most recruiting departments. Not the United Academy.
Her external admission this year is already bearing fruit: 17-year-old Joe Hugill received a professional contract worth £ 300,000 three months after arriving from Sunderland and got him into the water like a duck for U23 football. Alvaro Fernandez has also made the step into the second string and Charlie McNeill, the aforementioned England youth international, scored a goal on his U18 debut in a 4-0 win over Derby.
Marc Jurado and Alejandro Garnacho showed up at Derby’s training center and the 16-year-old debutant Kambwala started as central defender. His name was misspelled twice in the official report on the United website, but viewers will remember the name.
United announced the arrival of Kambwala from Sochaux on the deadline for a fee of € 4m. Usually the club would not accompany an academy that signed with a revealing picture, but they were happy to hand out a smiling snapshot of Kambwala glowing in United red as he posed.
“Do what you want with it to see how happy you are with the coup,” a United source said. The deal was brokered by the son of former Arsenal boss David Dein, Darren.
Kambwala should “initially” be included in the U18 squad, but for the French U17 captain promotion is already a matter of time. The add-ons involved in the Kambwala transfer fee include first-team clauses.
Kambwala’s highlights package from Derby was impressive: a set piece, an astute passing game, Olympic speed and a bloody gliding device. Derby played with 10 men for 70 minutes after Eli Christie and Kambwala were sacked and will face tougher tasks against the Everton and Liverpool academies before Christmas.
But not Chelsea. United can conclude their FA Youth Cup campaign in the semi-finals at St. George’s Park on Friday and are the only team to beat Chelsea in competition in the past seven years. Mason Greenwood, the third-round conqueror of Chelsea almost two years ago, is still eligible to play.
Chelsea is a short hop from the United Youth Cup with 10 and seven of its nine triumphs in the 2010s. United were the only team to beat them outside of the 2011 and 2018 finals. It was in these classes that Pogba, Jesse Lingard, Ravel Morrison and Greenwood, James Garner and Brandon Williams were produced. Eight of the players who played in the December 2018 match have made their first-team debuts since then, and the youngest – Teden Mengi – could return to captain the U18 this week.
Kambwala’s compatriot Hannibal Mejbri is only 17 years old and may also fall back for the first United Youth Cup semi-finals since they lost to Chelsea in 2012. Pogba, Lingard, Morrison, et al. were the last group to win the competition against Harry Maguire’s Sheffield United almost 10 years ago.
Les Ulis had another rough diamond that was polished in Manchester at Patrice Evra. Tshimen Buhanga trained martial arts and told The Parisian: “Willy is a well educated, polite, helpful, serious and competitive boy in the field who smiles outside. Of all the boys I have coached, Willy is the one who has impressed me the most from a character standpoint.
“I call him ‘Captain’ even when I have him on the phone. If he is perfectly following in Patrice Evra’s footsteps, you have to say ‘Captain’.”
United flew Mejbri happily by flying him to Norway for last year’s friendly against Kristiansund in Oslo. Another Frenchman, Philippe Mexes, was invited to Manchester as a teenager in Auxerre and received a number six shirt with his name printed on it and a small letter from Eric Cantona saying he hoped I would follow to follow in his footsteps. Mexes never did.
While Romain Poirot is the United scout who is tasked with finding world-class players (he recommended Edinson Cavani), United’s young talent scout Mathieu Seckinger is responsible for the discoveries of Mejbri and Kambwala.
Ed Woodward found Jurado and Fernandez worth mentioning in his program notes for the Crystal Palace game on September 19, and last week’s call for investors featured statistics on United’s “thriving academy” first published by the MEN has been.
He might soon mention Kambwala’s name.
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