Hugo Viana has hailed Manchester City’s flourishing Academy in an in-depth interview with our new Director of Football.
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City’s Academy is renowned the world over for helping bring through starlets into the first team like Phil Foden, Nico O’Reilly, Rico Lewis and Oscar Bobb or allowing young aces to spread their wings elsewhere across the football landscape such as Morgan Rogers, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Shea Charles and Cole Palmer - to name but a few.
Indeed, James Trafford progressed through our system before departing for a hugely successful spell at Burnley ahead of returning this past summer.
On Sunday, in the Manchester derby, we had seven Academy players in the first-team squad – Foden, O’Reilly, Lewis, Bobb and Trafford as well as Divine Mukasa and Stephen Mfuni.
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Viana is certainly a big fan of what he’s seen in the development side of the CFA and believes there are up-and-coming players in our ranks who can make an impression in the first team in the years to come.
“We have some good young players training with us in the first team,” he said in his interview with City Studios.
“Pep likes to see how the Academy are working with those young players - and what we see every day, they are doing a really good job in the Academy and we have a good numbers who can be ready for the first team really, really soon.
“I have seen also the U21s and U18s and I can see some players who can join the first team easily in the next years.”
Sign-in and watch the full interview with our Director of Football above.