Manchester United set to appoint Brentford's Stephen Torpey to lead academy
Torpey has been Brentford's academy director since January 2024, having previously served as head of academy coaching at United's rivals Manchester City.
The 43-year-old is set to become the first major hire under director of football Jason Wilcox and replace outgoing director of academy Nick Cox in the role. Cox has overseen United's youth system for six years and is due to join Everton as technical director after agreeing the move in June.
While Cox has been in the role, his remit extended to recruitment, retention, coaching, medical, logistics and education in a strategic leadership role requiring a broad knowledge across a variety of disciplines.
Under Torpey, Brentford were academy awarded Category Two status as the under-9s to under-16s age groups were reintroduced, following the relaunch of the club's academy in 2022 after spending six years following a B team model.
Torpey began his youth coaching career with Liverpool in 2008, working as a lead foundation coach across multiple age groups before joining City in 2014.
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He was brought in to implement a Barcelona-style coaching syllabus which eventually helped the club's youth teams to win trophies while playing an identifiable style of football, with a focus on individual concepts such as ball mastery, and team-based ideas like possession-based, attacking football.
Among those to come through the youth system and be successfully integrated into senior football under Torpey are Rico Lewis, Cole Palmer and James McAtee, with the latter two leaving the club to join Chelsea and Nottingham Forest respectively.
As well as helping lead the academy at City, Torpey was also head of coaching and played a role in player recruitment.
This is the latest development in what has been a summer of change for Brentford, having seen head coach Thomas Frank join Tottenham Hotspur and being replaced by former set piece coach Keith Andrews. Backroom staff members Justin Cochrane, Chris Haslam and Joe Newton all also left the club to join Frank at Spurs.
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