You almost certainly won’t have heard of 69-year-old Mancunian Tony Whelan, but many of the Premier League stars he has helped develop need no introduction.
As Manchester United’s academy programme advisor, Whelan has nurtured the early careers of Marcus Rashford, Jesse Lingard, Danny Wellbeck and Paul Pogba as well as hundreds of other young prospects, since first arriving at Carrington in 2005.
Yet it’s Whelan who describes 24-year-old Rashford – 45 years his junior – as a “hero of mine”.
Speaking to BBC Sport for Black History…
