The Greatest Football Story Ever Told - Part 4

As part of the build-up to Tour 2015, presented by Aon, we’ll be reflecting on some of the most important and unforgettable times in the Reds’ history - something we believe to be the greatest football story ever told. We'll also be hearing from some of the key personalities who have helped create that story. In chapter four of our series, we chart of the rise of the famous Busby Babes...

Matt Busby was always ahead of the game. While he managed to turn a talented squad into FA Cup winners in 1948 and First Division champions for the first time in just over four decades in 1951/52, he had already identified that his squad needed to be overhauled and, given the club’s scarcity of transfer funds, he would have to be creative in his assemblage of it.
Busby had assembled a network of talent scouts all over the British Isles, geared towards ensuring the best young talent around would be bound for Old Trafford, so that it may be nurtured under his tutelage. “I had envisaged my very own nursery or crèche,” said the Scot. “It was revolutionary even to think about getting boys straight from school. Get them early enough, I thought, and they would be trained according to some sort of pattern.”

And so, youth was given its chance. If they were good enough, Busby deemed them old enough and began scattering teenage talents into his team. United didn’t spend a single penny in the transfer market for over four years. Results inevitably suffered as his team of champions was dismantled, but the manager was unmoved. “I stuck it out. The future was more important than the present.” As his influential assistant manager, Jimmy Murphy, put it: “Waiting in the wings, ready to leap into league football were the most brilliant batch of youngsters ever to be on one club’s books at the same time: The incomparable Busby Babes.”

The Babes sobriquet was first used after Jackie Blanchflower and Roger Byrne made their first team debut in a goalless draw at fierce rivals Liverpool. Before the movement had a name, Mark Jones and Bill Foulkes had already appeared in the senior side, and over the next few years several future greats made their bow. Duncan Edwards, Dennis Viollet, Bobby Charlton, Eddie Colman and Liam Whelan all showed themselves to be naturals, born for the Old Trafford stage.

Soon, the swashbuckling youngsters were a well-oiled machine, purveyors of the finest football in the land. Both the 1955/56 and 1956/57 First Division titles were won at a canter, and they were the bookends to English football’s first involvement in the newly-formed European Cup, which would go on to become the Champions League. United’s involvement as English champions ended at the semi-final stage with a commendably gallant defeat to the mighty Real Madrid, but the excitement surrounding Busby’s youngsters was snowballing.

Yet, of all the great teams to have represented Manchester United, the Busby Babes stand alone; not only as a team of bright eyed brilliance and youthful moxie but also, because of the fate that would later befall them, of an unspeakably tragic loss.

Credit: manutd.com