Sir Alex Ferguson believes Manchester United will again have the opportunity to develop home-grown players as good as the crop headed by David Beckham, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes due to the elite player performance Plan which allows footballers as young as 12 to be recruited nationally.

Beckham and company were honed in the early 1990s before geographical restrictions were placed on recruitment for boys under 16 to within a 90-minute trip away from clubs.

This caused Ferguson to change policy and start signing young players from abroad, with the young Frenchman Paul Pogba, the Da Silva twins from Brazil, and earlier the Spaniard Gerard Piqué among the more notable players to pass through United's academy.

Ferguson told fifa.com: "It has to do with a change in the legislation. A few years ago the requirement was brought in that you could only sign young players that lived within an hour and a half radius of the club's headquarters.

"It wasn't like that before, which was how we were able to sign such fantastic young lads. But since it became physically impossible to find six or seven players a year so close by, we decided to change the priorities of our scouting system. As a result, we started to bring in very talented players from abroad and we've had success that way.

"But it's true, in terms of developing players from within the club, it's been a long time since we produced a player of David Beckham's calibre. But the legislation changed again a short while back and it'll be like it was 15 years ago once more, so I'm very optimistic we'll be able to get the production line we had in the past going again."

United have also looked further afield for slightly older but still raw talents, with Javier Hernández one recent illustration of this approach. The Mexican was signed by Ferguson as a 22-year-old from Guadalajara and the manager offered an insight into how he was recruited: "Our chief scout had a contact in Mexico who mentioned the lad's name, which was the first step.

"He got hold of some videos of Chivas's matches and showed me them. When we watched them we thought: 'This lad's got promise'. But you can't decide to sign someone just by watching them on a screen. So I sent my chief scout over to Mexico for a month, with a view to seeing what the player was like on and off the pitch. And that's how we discovered that his father and his grandfather had both played at World Cups and that the lad was on the verge of national-team selection.

"After all that, it was a pretty easy decision. We carried out all the necessary steps and managed to sign him before South Africa 2010, which was important as his value would have increased afterwards."

Ferguson, who is 70, again reiterated his stance on how long he may continue: "My philosophy is that, for as long as I'm enjoying my job and I'm in good health, I'm going to carry on here. I don't think you can set yourself limits, but nor can you plan too far ahead because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. The time will come [for me to retire], obviously, but right now it's not something I'm thinking about."