Students get tactical with United stars

Twenty-five year nine students were involved in planning a set of coaching drills with the help of young Reds stars Luke Shaw, Ben Amos, Jesse Lingard and Andreas Pereira.

Players were split between groups of students from schools across Greater Manchester including Broadoak School, Burnage Academy for Boys, Irlam and Cadishead College, Manchester Health Academy and New Charter Academy.

Students focused on planning the technical aspects of a training session, which included passing, shooting, dribbling and goalkeeping, and received some great advice and tips from the footballers.

Irlam and Cadishead College student Ben was thrilled to have United defender Luke Shaw join his table.  He commented, “I really enjoyed meeting the players; they have helped us to understand what they do in training and how to improve as a player. Luke was really good; when you’ve seen him on the TV it makes you quite nervous, but he helped us a lot with our planning.”

Shaw was equally as pleased to lend a helping hand.  He said, “It’s brilliant; it’s always nice to help out, especially when it’s with the young kids, we can hopefully be an inspiration for them to get involved in sports.”

He added, “You can’t just go into training and work on one thing, as you need to have the ability to do most things on the pitch, so it’s important for the students to learn a lot of different skills.”

Foundation Coach Otto Malone was impressed with how well students interacted with the players and joked, “It was great afternoon, the children focused much more when Luke sat down and they listened to every word he said. If I could have him at all of my sessions then it would make my job much easier!”