Manchester United Premier Cup

Manchester United Premier Cup

Founded	1993
Region	Worldwide
Current champions	Right to Dream Academy (1st title)
Most successful club(s)	Barcelona (3 titles)

The Manchester United Premier Cup is a global youth football tournament that was established by Nike in 1993.

History

The tournament was established by Nike in 1993 as the Nike Premier Cup and featured 624 teams from 15 European countries.^[1] The following year, the tournament expanded into the Asian continent, increasing the number of teams to 1,067,^[2] before adding a further 284 teams from the Latin American region in 1995 to reach 1,351 competing clubs.^[3] Chile hosted the first South American tournament that year as Universidad de Chile were crowned the first Latin American champions of the competition.^[3]

In 1996, the tournament was reorganised to include a World Finals stage following the regional tournaments. The regional tournaments served to whittle down the competing teams from over 2,500 to just 12 for the finals tournament held in Cape Town, South Africa in 1997.^[4] This structure was followed from 1996 to 2001, when it was decided that the host team and the national champions from 13 countries would be given direct qualification to the finals tournament, with the remaining six places in the 20-team tournament given to the teams from the Europe, Middle East, Latin America, South East Asia and Africa regions. In 1998, Athletic Bilbao won the tournament final in Paris and the winning players were rewarded with seats in the Stade de France for the final of the World Cup as hosts France defeated Brazil 3−0.^[5]

In 2003, to coincide with Nike replacing Umbro as kit sponsors of Manchester United, the tournament was re-branded as the Manchester United Premier Cup.^[1] The following year, Manchester City became the first English champions of the youth tournament, defeating hosts and city rivals Manchester United through a goal from Daniel Sturridge.^[6][7]

Dinamo Zagreb became the first Croatian and Eastern European side to win the tournament, defeating Milan 2−1 at Old Trafford on 9 August 2013.^[8] The following year, Dynamo Moscow became the first Russian club to win the tournament, beating Valencia 1−0 in the final on 9 August 2014.^[9] The tournament has continued to grow since its formation as a regional tournament in 1993 and, in 2014, over 8,000 teams and 1 million players competed in Premier Cup tournaments from 43 countries to gain one of 20 places available at the Premier Cup World Finals in Manchester.^[1]

Premier Cup World Champions

Season	Winners	Host country	Venue city
1993–94	Porto (European)[10]
1994–95	Real Madrid (European)[2] Malaysia (Asia-Pacific)[2]
1995–96	Espanyol (European)[3] Bukit Jalil Academy (Asia-Pacific)[3] Universidad de Chile (Latin America)[3]
1996–97	Platense[4]	South Africa	Cape Town
1997–98	Athletic Bilbao[5]	France	Paris
1998–99	Barcelona[11]	Spain	Barcelona
1999–2000	Internacional[12]	Netherlands	Amsterdam
2000–01	Vitória[13]	Germany	Berlin
2001–02	São Paulo[14]	Portugal	Lisbon
2002–03	Corinthians[15]	United States	Portland, Oregon
2003–04	Manchester City[6]	England	Manchester
2004–05	Fluminense[16]	Hong Kong	Hong Kong
2005–06	Guadalajara[17]	England	Manchester
2006–07	Barcelona[18]	England	Manchester
2007–08	Fluminense[19]	England	Manchester
2008–09	São Paulo[20]	England	Manchester
2009–10	Barcelona[21]	England	Manchester
2010–11	Pachuca[22]	England	Manchester
2011–12	Universidad Católica[23]	China	Shanghai
2012–13	Dinamo Zagreb[24]	England	Manchester
2013–14	Dynamo Moscow[25]	England	Manchester
2014–15	Right to Dream Academy[26]	England	Manchester

References