Manchester United's Academy Stars Shine in Pre-Season
In Stockholm on Saturday, as Manchester United face Atletico Madrid, a quiet line will be drawn under a familiar pre-season sight: academy faces in Michael Carrick’s travelling squad.
This is the last of it, for now. The final tour stop where the kids pack their boots alongside the seniors.
By the time Paris St-Germain arrive next weekend, the landscape changes. Bruno Fernandes, Diogo Dalot and Matheus Cunha are due back on the training pitch. Belgium duo Senne Lammens and Youri Tielemans, who started their pre-season work at Carrington on Thursday, will move up a gear. The squad will look older, more recognisable, more like Manchester United as most people picture them.
Who from this current crop of hopefuls will still be around when the serious business starts remains unclear. Recruitment is incomplete, outgoings are still being discussed, and the dominoes of the transfer market have yet to fall in full. Some youngsters will go back to the under-21s. One or two might just stay where they are.
What is already obvious is who stands at the front of that queue.
Lacey and Fletcher step into the light
Shea Lacey and Tyler Fletcher did not arrive in this conversation by accident. Their status inside the club was made plain at Brighton on the final day of last season.
With little riding on the result, Carrick had choices. He chose them. Both were named in the squad, both came off the bench in the second half of a 3-0 win that closed the campaign with a flourish. It felt like a nod to the future then. It looks like the start of something more substantial now.
Nothing since has suggested their rise has slowed.
Lacey, in particular, has lit up pre-season. He came on against Wrexham in Helsinki and immediately changed the feel of the game, gliding into pockets of space, demanding the ball, playing as if this was his stage, not a trial run. Six days later in Norway, as United swept Rosenborg aside 5-0, he added a goal that belonged on any highlight reel.
The 19-year-old spent long spells in that match operating just off Joshua Zirkzee, a classic No 10 position, with Bryan Mbeumo stationed wide on the right, the channel Lacey loves most. From there came the moment that underlined why coaches talk about him in such glowing terms.
He burst onto a through ball from Zirkzee, killed it with his left, slowed the defender with his body shape, then chopped inside with his right before curling the finish into the far corner. It looked effortless. That is the point with Lacey: the game seems to bend to his rhythm.
Last May, after a 4-3 Premier League 2 semi-final win over Manchester City, under-21s coach Adam Lawrence described the Liverpudlian as having “magic in his feet”. It was not just the tricks that impressed him. Lawrence went out of his way to praise Lacey’s defensive work that night, a hint at the demands being placed on him behind the scenes.
By then, Lacey was already training virtually full-time with the senior squad. That arrangement is not expected to change. Performances like those in Helsinki and Norway only harden that view.
Fletcher’s rapid rise
If Lacey brings the sparks, Fletcher provides the steady flame.
His own surge began with a 16-minute cameo at Brighton. It was a small window, but it clearly spoke loudly enough. Scotland manager Steve Clarke took note and invited Fletcher — son of former international midfielder Darren and twin brother of Jack, who currently represents England at youth level — to train with his pre-World Cup squad.
From a few days at camp came a full international debut against Bolivia. Then came the real jolt: when Billy Gilmour was ruled out of the tournament through injury, Fletcher, at 19, was drafted into Clarke’s 26-man World Cup squad.
He did not play a minute at the finals, but that hardly matters. Those weeks are now part of his footballing education: the travel, the meetings, the standards, the reality of elite international football. It set a target in front of him and showed him exactly how high the bar sits.
Those who know him insist standards were never going to be an issue. He has grown up around them. From his father he has absorbed the value of detail, discipline and humility. Around Carrington, Fletcher is spoken of as mature, selfless, aware. These are qualities that do not show up on a stat sheet but often separate those who stay from those who drift away.
On the pitch, his game is built on clarity rather than chaos. He keeps things simple and makes them look clean. He reads play early, takes intelligent positions, passes crisply and without fuss. He organises. He talks. He leads.
Jacob Devaney, United’s Premier League 2 captain last season before his loan move to St Mirren, is another academy player held in high regard and has impressed in pre-season. Yet when Carrick has sent out his “second-half team” of youngsters this summer, the armband has gone to Fletcher.
That says plenty. So does his decision after the World Cup. Entitled to three weeks off, he took two and came back. For coaches, that kind of choice lingers in the memory.
The last audition – for now
Around them, the supporting cast in Stockholm tells its own story of opportunity and uncertainty. Harry Amass, Jaydan Kamason, Dan Armer, Jack Fletcher, Jim Thwaites, Ethan Williams and JJ Gabriel have all kept their spots for the trip. Others have been diverted to under-21 duty against Altrincham, their immediate path nudged in a different direction.
For this group, Atletico Madrid represents both another test and a curtain call. Once the senior internationals filter back in and new signings arrive, space tightens. Decisions follow.
Lacey and Fletcher have done enough to sit at the front of Carrick’s mind as those calls are made. The winger with the “magic in his feet” and the midfielder who makes the game look simple have forced their way into the conversation.
The academy faces will be fewer when PSG come to town. The question now is not whether United’s youngsters have made an impression.
It is which of them will still be walking out alongside the stars when the season truly begins.
