Nick Cox, the director of Manchester United’s Academy, has given a wide-ranging interview as he prepares to leave Old Trafford after nearly a decade with the club, describing his job as “life-changing”.
From Manchester to Merseyside
Cox first joined the Red Devils in 2016, after previous spells with Sheffield United and Watford, and was promoted to the director’s role in 2019.
During this time 38 youth players achieved first-team debuts – a clear indication of the Academy’s success – with the club’s website stating Cox helped enhance “one of the most productive youth development systems in the world”.
But this was not the state of affairs the 47-year-old encountered when he first stepped foot at Carrington.
Everton expert Stephen Hurrell (TEAMtalk) describes United’s youth set-up as in “disarray” at the point of Cox’s arrival: “the talent pool had dried up and the pathway to the first team was non existent”.
But over the next few years, the report reveals Cox’s influence “transformed” the Academy with his leadership considered a “shining light of competence” at a club on short supply in the past decade.
At the point that Cox is set to leave, Hurell concludes Cox has “transformed United’s academy into one of the best in the world”.
And it’s this outstanding body of work at the Theatre of Dreams which led Everton to offer him the technical director role at the Hill Dickinson Stadium – a promotion within a football club’s vast structure.
The Toffees were not the first side to try and lure United’s director away from Manchester, with “a long line of clubs” having previously made attempts to poach him – but Everton were the first to receive a yes.
Reflecting on his nine years with United in an interview with Talk of the Devils, Cox believes his mentality was always to “leave something better than we found it” – and he has done exactly that for the Red Devils.
“A Life-Changing Experience
“I’ve always kind of delivered the job with the sense of custodianship,” Cox states.
“I’ve always talked to the staff about the importance of custodianship and then our duty and our job is to leave something better than we found it. So, yeah, I guess on the way out, you start to think a little bit more about that, the handing over of the baton and the changing of the guards or however you want to term it.
“I’m really aware that the experience has been life-changing for me and for my family. You know, I’ve done things I never could have imagined. I’ve experienced some incredible things and I’ve learned a lot.
“So, it’s been incredibly life-changing and I appreciate that. I sometimes feel as if the club has given me more than I ever could have given to it. And then there’s some pride.
“It’s up for other people to decide how good we’ve been in the last 10 years, not for me to decide that. I guess all I can be sure of is that we did left no stone unturned and we worked as hard as we could and every day we try to make good decisions in the best interest of the club and best interest of young people. We made the sort of decisions we think that parents would want us to make for their kids.”
Cox is quick to point out that the focus on an Academy director and first-team head coach like Ruben Amorim are different, however – and this leads to different approaches.
“Ruben’s trying to win games in a pressurised environment and I’m trying to develop players, adaptable players that not only can debut in the next few weeks, but also can sustain a career for the next 15-20 years,” Cox reasons.
Much has been made of Amorim’s unique 3-4-2-1 system which places a very specific set of requirements on his players. And there has been discussion over whether United’s youth-teams should adopt the set-up to help streamline the ascension into the first-team.
But Cox is adamant academy coaching should give young players a “broad education” which they then take with them throughout the rest of their career, rather than zeroing in on one system for one manager in one moment.
“If you’re working with a really young player, they might still be playing in 2050. So the job of an academy is to give the players a well-rounded and broad education of the game and to be put in environments where they become adaptable and they have the ability to make decisions and recognise patterns on the pitch.”
And it’s this long-term vision for the future which is why Cox has achieved such an impressive feat in his time at Old Trafford – and why Everton were so intent on securing the 47-year-old.
United’s new Academy director will be Stephen Torpey, who started work this week, having joined from Brentford to become Cox’s successor.
Featured image Alex Livesey via Getty Images
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Darragh Fox
Darragh is a writer for The Peoples Person who spent three years as a history graduate slowly realising football was by far the most interesting thing to write about.
