If You’re Soft You Won’t Make It

Newly appointed Manchester United academy director Nicky Butt has stressed the importance of preparing young players for the hard slog that sometimes football demands.The former England international was appointed the club’s academy director earlier this week, and he replaced BrianMcClair, who left his position at Carrington around nine months ago.[adrotate banner="108"]Butt has been charged with revampingthe club’s youth system, which has received some criticism in recent years and is falling behind ManchesterCity, who have build a state-of-the-art facilities for their production line of players.The former midfielder, who himself was a Manchester United academy graduate, has a blueprint for future Red Devils and believes it is important that the club prepare the youngsters for the hard graft that sometimes football will demand.Butt insisted that it is all good to have great facilities, but it is also important that players learn to slog it out under trying conditions as they will not always get the best of everything in their football career all the time.The Manchester United academy director told MUTV:"In football, or any walk of life really, it’s not always going to be easy with pats on the back and talk of how well you’re doing.“You’re coming up against hurdles quite a lot and getting a lot of stick from certain individuals in the media, where you live, out in Manchester. If you’re too soft, you’re not going to be able to deal with that. You’ve got to have great facilities, which we feel we’ve got here, but you need a lot of tough things as well.“You can be having everything easy – training grounds like villages, everything like looking through a crystal ball or with rose-tinted glasses.You’ve got to have a bit of the hard stuff as well, got to have a bit of a slog,play on bad surfaces, sometimes play against bad teams, bad crowds, with wind and rain-swept pitches.“Football is not always about Old Trafford, the Nou Camp or the Bernabeu."Part of the famous batch of academy graduate known as the ‘Class of 92’, Butt won six Premier League titles, three FA Cups and a Champions League before he left Manchester United to join Newcastle United in 2004.