He’s won the Emirates FA Cup, represented his country and scored at the Bernabeu, but when did Danny Welbeck realise he would make it as a footballer?
Having grown up in Longsight, the future England striker joined Manchester United as a nine-year-old and progressed through their academy by testing himself against older players on a regular basis.
“When you’re younger, you just want to play football and enjoy it, so I think it was just kind of normal for me to play against people that were older than me,” the 26-year-old told Arsenal Player. That’s when I was in the academy at United and I would keep playing in the older age groups and keep progressing there.
“Because the competition is so tough, even in the academy levels you see people go every single season, but with my age group we had a good core and we really stuck together as a group.
“That was good for us and we were a really good team. One season we went the whole season winning every single game. That was a massive achievement and I think that was at under-14s or under-13s. From there, that’s when it starts to get that little bit more serious and you start looking forward to the scholarship years.
“It was good man, it was good. It was a challenge but a good challenge and once you sign your scholarship, that’s when you start directing every single piece of focus on becoming a professional footballer.”
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