Man United have one of the most esteemed academies in world football and this is the greatest 1-11 the club has produced.
Dean Henderson
The trickiest pick, by far, is the goalkeeper. United have a reasonable recent record of producing decent 'keepers for anyone but United (Gary Walsh, Tom Heaton, Sam Johnstone) but it is an area they have never properly developed for the first-team. Until Dean Henderson emerged.
Henderson has only made the bench for United twice and is still yet to attain an England cap. Potentially, he could be the United and England No.1 for upwards of a decade, and is already worth around £40million. It is maybe crass to place Henderson in such legendary company, though he is possibly the most talented United academy 'keeper there has been.
Walsh made the transition from the 1986 FA Youth Cup final side to the first-team and started 62 times for United, but was unavailable for the 1990 FA Cup final and replay, and overlooked for the 1991 League Cup and European Cup Winners' Cup finals in favour of Les Sealey. Alex Ferguson thought Walsh would 'take care of the future' in 1991 but then received glowing reports about Peter Schmeichel.
Jimmy Rimmer is an unlikely one that got away from United. Manager Wilf McGuinness tried to phase out Alex Stepney at the start of 1970-71 by starting Rimmer - an arrangement that ended almost as soon as McGuinness was sacked and replaced by Sir Matt Busby. Busby reinstalled his old favourite and Stepney stayed at United for seven more years.
Rimmer replaced Bob Wilson as first choice at Arsenal and then moved to Aston Villa, where he won the English championship and European Cup.
Duncan Edwards
Almost as much of a tragedy as the premature passing of Edwards, killed in the Munich air disaster, is there is scant footage to showcase what a titanic footballer he was. Nobody has captured his presence better than club and national teammate, Sir Bobby Charlton.
"He was incomparable, I feel terrible trying to explain to people just how good he was. His death was the biggest single tragedy ever to happen to Manchester United and English football. I always felt I could compare well with any player - except Duncan. He was such a talent, I always felt inferior to him. He didn't have a fault with his game."
Edwards played 177 times for United and perhaps his greatest legacy is there is not a more complete player for a modern United footballer to be likened to.
Gary Neville
"If he was an inch taller he'd be the best centre half in Britain," Ferguson once said of Neville. "His father is 6ft 2in. I'd check the milkman."
It is nearly a decade since Neville officially retired and the rise of the social media era fan is seemingly intent on disputing Neville's brilliance. An ignoramus recently referred to Neville as 'average'. The reality is anyone who watched him throughout his career knows Neville was, for the best part of a decade, one of the finest right-backs in Europe.
Neville did not have the international recognition of Lilian Thuram, the exoticism of another World Cup winner, Cafu, or the unflustered magnificence of Javier Zanetti. He had more club medals than all of them, though, and was one-half of one of the most devastating wing combinations in United's history.
If Frankenstein were to create his monster of a footballer, there would not be a more suitable right foot than David Beckham's. It is easily forgotten what a magnificent crosser Neville was, though. Even when he was practically past it, Neville whipped in one for Wayne Rooney against AC Milan to lift the tension on a European night and, before Beckham assumed dead-ball responsibilities, Neville mastered it at Upton Park for Brian McClair's equaliser in 1995.
His brother kept him out of the 1996 FA Cup final XI but Neville had already lined up in the defeat to Everton the previous year. He started in the 1999, 2004, and 2005 Cup finals, the 2006 League Cup final, and in Barcelona in '99.
From 1995-96 to 2006-07, Neville started at least 30 matches a season for United - a run only ended by injury. For England, he was the undisputed right-back for over a decade.
Bill Foulkes
Umpteen United players have been heroes to supporters but Foulkes is one of a handful truly worthy of the description. His recollections of the Munich air disaster are one of the most sobering.
"My last memory is of pushing a pack of cards into my pocket," he told reporters on the eve of the 50th anniversary. "Just when we should have been getting off the ground, there was the first of three sickening bumps. My strangest souvenir was the pack of playing cards.
"I had not the slightest bruise on me, and my pocket was not ripped, yet the top quarter-inch of those cards had been sliced off and had disappeared. The cut was so clean. How they came to be like that was a total mystery."
Remarkably, Foulkes played two weeks later on an emotionally-charged evening against Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup quarter-final. Although Busby's team was decimated, Foulkes was present for the club's recovery and rebuild; collecting an FA Cup winner's medal in 1963 before helping United to titles in '65 and '67.
Foulkes and Bobby Charlton were the two survivors from Munich to start in the European Cup final triumph over Benfica on a balmy evening in 1968. Nicknamed 'Rock Face', Foulkes is fourth behind Ryan Giggs, Charlton, and Paul Scholes on the list of United's appearance-makers.
David Beckham
It is unfortunate Beckham is viewed by most as a celebrity, rather than a former footballer. George Best once said of Beckham: "He can't kick with his left foot, he can't head, he can't tackle, and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that, he's alright." Best was right. But Beckham was world-class.
Beckham had the complete right foot and could elicit the same accuracy from his instep as his laces. That and an unrivalled work-rate compensated for shortcomings in his game, such as when he caught the quicker and more complete Steve McManaman napping at Anfield in 1999. Beckham did not provide the title of a breakout Keira Knightley film by marrying a Spice Girl.
When he was at his zenith, the standard of Beckham's crossing and free-kicks was without peer. His form in the Treble-winning season is one of the truly great individual campaigns from a United player, all the more exceptional given the bilious crowds he faced following the 1998 World Cup.
Beckham was a relatively late bloomer. His Class of '92 teammate Neville had ousted Paul Parker from the XI in 1994 and started in the '95 Cup final alongside Nicky Butt. Beckham was advised to spend time on loan at Preston North End that season and returned sooner than expected before breaking through in the next season when United won their second domestic double.
That cemented Beckham's place in Ferguson's next great United side that peaked in '99.
Nobby Stiles
Stiles is the least gifted of the selections but his service to United over 11 years as a player, and then with the youth team, was immense. Stiles, in thrall to the late Eddie Colman, started more than 50 matches in three separate seasons during United's revival in the 1960s and was a fixture in both title-winning teams.
The Collyhurst-born midfielder was tasked with taming Eusebio in the '68 European Cup final at Wembley - two years after neutering the Benfica great in the World Cup semi-final at the same venue. Stiles, Charlton, and Paul Pogba are the only United players to have played in and won a World Cup final.
"Nobby Stiles a dirty player? No, he's never hurt anyone. Mind you, he's frightened a few!" Busby is reputed to have said. Stiles's father was an undertaker. "They used to say I kicked them and he buried them," Stiles gleefully reminisced on a Match of the Day morning show in 1999.
Leeds had Norman Hunter, Chelsea Ron Harris, Liverpool Tommy Smith and Stiles was United's terrier. Despite the hard-man image, Sir Alf Ramsey said he had four world-class players in his '66 side and Stiles was one of them.
Sir Bobby Charlton
Charlton is arguably the greatest player of United and England, purely for overcoming the trauma of Munich to inspire both club and country to European and world glory within a decade. Charlton was the first Englishman to receive the Ballon d'Or and his goalscoring records at international and club level stood until Wayne Rooney usurped him in 2015 and 2017.
Charlton is immortalised with a statue and stand named after him at Old Trafford. However young a matchgoer may be, if they clock Charlton they do not need to be told who he is. Charlton lifted the FA Youth Cup, the FA Cup, the league championship and European Cup with United and plundered 249 goals across 17 years.
Rewatching footage of Charlton, it is difficult to discern whether he was right or left-footed, so magnificent are the standard of his goals. "There has never been a more popular footballer," Busby said. "He was as near to perfection as man and player as it is possible to be."
George Best
There is a subtle difference between player and footballer. The former encompasses what one has achieved in their career and the latter is more ability-based. George Best was a superior footballer than Sir Bobby Charlton.
Best, the third United recipient of the Ballon d'Or in 1968, was the first truly iconic British sportsman and - rightly or wrongly - United's love affair starts with the trailblazing Best. "If I had been born ugly, you would never have heard of Pele," Best once quipped.
In 1992, the magisterial Hugh McIlvanney wrote for The Sunday Times: "George Best had come in along the goalline from the corner flag in a blur of intricate deception. Having embarrassed three or four challengers, he drove the ball high into the net with a fierce simplicity that made spectators wonder if the acuteness of the angle had been an optical illusion.
"'What was the time of that goal?' asked a young reporter in the Manchester United press box. 'Never mind the time, son,' said an older voice. 'Just write down the date.'" McIlvanney said Best possessed 'feet as sensitive as a pick-pocket's hands'.
"I think I have found you a genius," the United scout Bob Bishop telegrammed to Busby. For a complete picture of Best's life, watch the documentary George Best: All by Himself, while you still can.
Giggs
"I remember the first time I saw him. He was 13 and just floated over the ground like a cocker spaniel chasing a piece of silver," Ferguson said of Giggs. No United player has been more successful than Giggs, credibly compared to Best following his emergence in the early 90s, and the first of the Class of '92 to graduate to the senior side.
A tweenie tweeted recently Giggs was a 'long-ball merchant', which is akin to suggesting Cristiano Ronaldo is only useful in the air. Giggs reinvented his game at the age of 35 and was dubiously voted the PFA Player of the Year in 2009, though it was the start of a long and fulfilling Indian summer. Micah Richards, risibly billed as the next Duncan Edwards, was left with twisted blood by Giggs in the 2009 derby that was won by Michael Owen, but only through Giggs's perceptive pass.
There are caveats to a great career. Giggs was fortunate the crescendo to 2007-08 - the clincher against Wigan and the penalty in Moscow - was so unique it overshadowed such a diabolical season that Paddy Crerand was forced to defend him in an MUTV phone-in.
Like most great wingers, Giggs could be erratic and he arguably did not live up to the promise of those coruscating early years. Beckham, Scholes, and Roy Keane were more pivotal to United in the late 90s and the removal of Giggs against Blackburn Rovers in 2003 was cheered by the majority inside Old Trafford. The fallow years between 2003-06 were forgettable for Giggs.
After flirting with the celebrity lifestyle in his early 20s, Giggs became more professional and his career continued into his 40s. Without his purple patch, United would not have won the league in 2011.
Paul Scholes
Like Giggs, Scholes prolonged his United career through a canny reinvention. The bitter departure of Roy Keane preceded an eye problem that sidelined Scholes for five months in 2006. He used the time off to take stock and, the following season, switched from midfield runner to dictator next to Michael Carrick. United won their first title in four years.
Nobody ghosted into areas quite like Scholes in his halcyon days as a box-to-box midfielder. Scholes was originally used by Ferguson as a striker to offset the absence of Eric Cantona in 1995 and then the sale of Mark Hughes, scoring an impressive 14 goals in 31 appearances in his breakout season of 1995-96. The England coach Glenn Hoddle identified Scholes's potential as a creative midfielder at Le Tournoi in 1997 and, with Cantona now retired, Scholes became indispensable to United.
Scholes tallied double figures in eight seasons and his 20-goal haul in 2002-03 is - like Scholes himself - one of the more unassuming individual seasons from a United player, eclipsed by Ruud van Nistelrooy. Scholes plundered a hat-trick in the 6-2 evisceration of Newcastle, one of the truly great United away-day performances.
In a final season blemished by a injury, Scholes still changed games. "I need to say a big thank you to Paul Scholes, because when he came on everything was ticking and every single pass he hit was the right one," Robin van Persie said after the 3-2 win at Southampton in September 2012. "Everyone felt that - I certainly did. With him you're always on your toes because anything can happen. For me, he's the man of the match." Van Persie had scored all three.
Mark Hughes
Tentative chants of 'Hughsie' from the Stretford End as the Stoke City manager approached the tunnel four years ago were met with disgust by some United supporters. Hughes left United in 1995 and burned his bridges with the club before he took over at City in 2008 through antagonistic comments while manager of Blackburn Rovers. Those who worshipped Hughes as a player separate that man from Hughes the manager.
Hughes is possibly the greatest academy-bred number nine at United. To those growing up following United in the 80s, he assisted Norman Whiteside at Wembley in '85 and was one of the most prolific marksman since Denis Law. Some United fans protested against the sale of Hughes to Barcelona in 1986 at Gary Bailey's testimonial but the £2m transfer went through.
Ferguson brought Hughes back in 1988 and he was instrumental in United's resurgence. Hughes and Cantona was the finest United strike partnership since Denis Law and David Herd in the sixties and climaxed with the club's first double in 1994.
Hughes started in five FA Cup finals (including the 1990 replay) across 10 years with United and won every major domestic honour. His finest hour was in Europe - the formidable winner in the 1991 Cup Winners' Cup final.