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Jose Mourinho has chosen to promote Kieran McKenna from Manchester United's academy staff as the third of a trio of replacements for outgoing assistant manager Rui Faria.

The 32-year-old Irishman will step up from a role as Under-18 coach to help Mourinho organise and run first-team training.

McKenna, a former Tottenham Hotspur and Northern Ireland Under-21 midfielder, will join Michael Carrick and Sampdoria fitness coach Stefano Rapetti as new additions to Mourinho's technical staff ahead of a pivotal third campaign as Old Trafford manager.

Having publicly stated the impossibility of finding one man capable of replacing his principal assistant, Mourinho wants Carrick, McKenna and Rapetti to cover the range of responsibilities Faria held during 17 years in which the pair won 20 major trophies at five elite clubs in four different countries.

(Image: REUTERS) (Image: AFP)

“When Rui is leaving after 17 years I have nobody, nobody in the world of football ready to be my assistant manager. Nobody,” said Mourinho. So I prefer to educate people, to structure my staff in a way where there is space for their education, for their improvement.

“And I think naturally when Michael has the Pro License badges, normally with the personality he has, with the friendship, with our honesty, I think it will be for him. But obviously I’m going to improve my staff in the performance level related to the fitness and the relation with the tactical work.”

A United supporter from childhood, McKenna was brought to United from Tottenham's academy in the summer of 2016 and has been praised for the quality and attacking verve of the Under 18s' play. McKenna's team were runners-up to Manchester City in the Professional U18 Development League 1 North in the first stage of his debut season before finishing fourth in Division 1 of the national second stage. This season, United under-18s beat City to the North title before losing to Chelsea in a one-off national final.

Interviewed by the club magazine last summer, McKenna emphasised the most importance of attacking play and of providing a clear pathway for his charges to first-team football.

“I think there are a lot of things in this country we’re doing right in academy football,” McKenna said. “I think the standard of games is really high and we had some terrific games last season. I’d say the ones against Manchester City , Chelsea and some of the games with Liverpool have been probably as high a level of game as Real Madrid versus Barcelona or Bayern Munich versus Borussia Dortmund – or any game you might have in Europe at that level.

“I think there are a lot of good things in the academy system, but I feel the biggest challenge is still what comes at the next step when they leave the youth team and when they progress. How do we get them opportunities to play competitive football? Whether that will be with first teams, on loan, in the Under-23s, I think that next step of the pathway is something everyone in youth development is looking at and trying to refine to make sure some of the good work going through the academies ends with the players at the end of it getting the right opportunities at the right times.”

Last month McKenna shortlisted three of his current squad for the club's Young Player of the Year award: winger Tahith Chong, midfielder James Garner and defender Lee O'Connor.

(Image: REUTERS)

Fitness specialist Rapetti has been recruited from Serie A Sampdoria after Faria told Mourinho that he had decided to leave United. The 41-year-old Rapetti was part of Mourinho's 2009/10 treble winning technical staff at Internazionale. Similar to McKenna, the Italian was hand picked from amongst Inter's Primavera coaching staff in the summer of 2009 to form half of a specialist unit created by Mourinho and Faria to work with injured players and assist first-team technical sessions.

Faria chose to resign his position to spend more time with his young family, who are based in the south of England. The 42-year-old will also prepare himself to take his first full managerial position. Long regarded as the most talented and capable assistant manager in the European game, Faria had previously rejected a host of offers to manager leading clubs in order to remain loyal to Mourinho, who first hired him at Uniao Leiria in 2001 as a 25-year-old sports science graduate.