Eric Harrison: The meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson that changed the course of Manchester United history

Former Manchester United youth coach and mentor to the famed Class of 92, Eric Harrison, has died at the age of 81.

Harrison joined United in 1981 after spending eight years at Everton and was tasked with developing the club’s youth academy by then-manager Ron Atkinson.

When Atkinson left five years later, Alex Ferguson joined and decided to keep Harrison in place – on one condition: more youth team players had to start making the first-team.

In a meeting between the pair in 1986, Ferguson made clear he was not happy with the academy as it was.

‘I want more players!’

“I was a bit touchy,” admitted Harrison years later, “because I thought he was having a go at me. So I pointed out that Norman Whiteside and one or two others had come through to play in the first team. He said, ‘Yeah, I accept that. But I want more than that.’ And when I said, ‘How do you mean, you want more that that?’ he replied, ‘I want more players!’

Refusing to be cowed, Harrison laid out his demands to Ferguson.

“Always having been a bit confident, I said, ‘Right, we’ll do a deal. You get me better-quality players, and I’ll get you more youngsters in the first team.’ And he said, ‘Done!’ So he revamped it and worked extremely hard, as he’d done at Aberdeen. They’d had a lot of young players there and he said that was the way forward. He had meetings of scouts and he re-motivated everybody.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Six years later, the famed “Class of 92” would emerge, with the likes of Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville all making the first team and inspiring Manchester United to their most successful period.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s tribute

“Eric’s contribution to football and not just at Manchester United was incredible,” Sir Alex Ferguson said following the news of Harrison’s death on Thursday.

“When I came as manager I was lucky enough to have Eric on the staff as head of youth development, so I got to see the work he did and not just with the Class of ’92 but with all the young players. He built character and determination in those young players and prepared them for the future.

“He was a teacher, he gave these players a path, a choice and he only did that through his own hard work and sacrifice. He was able to impart that education to the young which made him one of the greatest coaches of our time.

“On a personal level, Eric had a wicked dry sense of humour and was straight talking and I admired that in him.”