Jez George is not the sort of person to seek praise. The 44-year-old, who has filled just about every job going at Cambridge United, from head of youth and first-team manager to director of football and chief executive, stresses he has no desire for the spotlight to shine on him before Friday night’s FA Cup tie against Manchester United. It is, however, hard to overlook the contribution of a man who has walked the length and breadth of the country for his club.

While Richard Money, the head coach, was leading Cambridge back into the Football League last season following a nine-year absence, George was busy chalking off 26 marathon walks in 26 days, stopping off at every Premier League ground in the country, starting at Newcastle and finishing at Norwich, to raise £126,000 for the club’s community trust.

The walk had been planned for the end of the season but the Conference play-offs made life a little tricky for George, who is now chief executive but was director of football at the time. “Halifax at home, in the second leg, I was in the Pennines, so I got up at 4am, did three hours, drove back to Cambridge for the Halifax game in the play-off semi-final and then drove back to the point I’d left the walk. So I was on Saddleworth Moor at 1am, pitch black, finishing off. The next day I walked to Man City and Man United.”

George has got form for this kind of thing. In 2009, he walked 260 miles from Torquay to Cambridge to raise £60,000 to keep the club’s youth scheme going for another season – funding is cut off two years after relegation to the Conference. The following year George completed a 420-mile round trip, stopping off at five former Football League clubs who were in the same boat as Cambridge. He finished up at Wembley to bang on the Football Association’s door and ask for help.

While the wider financial changes for which George campaigned were never introduced, his fundraising helped to keep the youth setup going at the Abbey Stadium and, ultimately, saved Cambridge from slipping out of the Conference and beyond. Asked to take over as manager on a caretaker basis in February 2011, when Cambridge were in a dire mess financially, George turned to the kids he had been nurturing and dragged the club to safety.

“The club owes a great deal of gratitude to those young players because at the moment they were needed, they were there,” George says. “That showed the value of having the youth scheme, because if that was never set up and those players weren’t there, I think the club would have gone out of business and you would have another Hereford on your hands.”

George, a former bank clerk and semi-professional goalkeeper, arrived at Cambridge in 2006 with the remit of getting the youth system up and running again – without a penny to spend. “They closed the scheme when they got relegated. Samir Carruthers, Jack Collison, John Ruddy – they were all in the scheme. But every single player left, so we started from scratch. The club didn’t want to finance it, so we set a company up, Cambridge United Youth Development Limited.

“Not only did we not have the funding, we had no compensation rights for any of the players, so anyone could take anyone at any time. We had to create a bit of a siege mentality where it was us against the world. The more campaigning we did to say it wasn’t fair, the more loyalty we got from the parents and the players to stick with us. And we raised money – if it wasn’t for those two walks [in 2009 and 2010], we wouldn’t have kept the thing going.”

Cambridge went from playing against Histon, Kettering Town and Corby Town at youth level to taking on Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City, despite still being in the Conference. They even travelled to Germany to take part in an indoor tournament involving Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. “We were competitive and we gained a reputation,” George says.

Not that he wants any credit for the walks, money raised or the success of a youth system which, in the wake of Cambridge’s return to the Football League, will receive £280,000 if it is awarded category three status following a recent audit. Instead George prefers to talk about the involvement, help and support of so many others at Cambridge, including Money, the man he describes as “the real catalyst” for the club’s revival.

Money was appointed head coach in October 2012 after George decided to step down from the managerial role he never really wanted and revert to being director of football. Dan Ashworth, a good friend who was working as West Bromwich Albion’s technical director at the time, put forward Money as a candidate and also gave George some valuable insight into the continental structure that served the Midlands club so well. George met Money a few days later and by the end of the following season Cambridge had won the FA Trophy and promotion via the play-offs.

Off the field things have not moved at the same pace. The Abbey Stadium is in need of much more than a lick of paint and it was only recently that Cambridge recruited someone to look after the commercial side. George smiles as he recalls how he told Liz Slack, the club’s newly appointed business development manager, to start work on Monday 5 January as it would “be quiet after all the Christmas games”. Come 7.40pm on her first day in the job, Cambridge had drawn Manchester United in the FA Cup fourth round.

It has been stressful and exciting ever since, with a recent scouting mission one of the highlights. “Richard and I went to watch United against Southampton,” George says, smiling. “When we play at the level we play at, and last year in the Conference, we’ve been to quite a few places that bore no resemblance to sitting in the directors’ box at Old Trafford watching a Premier League game. So that was a nice change.”

The biggest challenge has been dealing with the demand for tickets at a stadium that holds fewer than 8,000. “Processes are in place to cope with 3,000-5,000 people. And when we’ve had gates of 7,000, it’s with 7,000 wanting a ticket, not a 7,000 gate with 20,000 wanting a ticket. I think it was key to get a balance. It’s £10 for a kid to stand up and watch Man United in our ground and that’s because we want those kids to be the future of our fanbase. So it’s important we don’t get carried away with how much money we can make and have a bit of a longer-term view as well as being loyal to those who looked after the club when it had no money.”

For Manchester United and their all-star cast, the Abbey Stadium promises to be a culture shock and a very different experience to Yeovil in the previous round. “They’ll find an old-fashioned ground where three sides of it are dilapidated and not really fit for purpose for what we want it to be, and a crowd that is quite close to the pitch,” George says. “But the playing surface is pretty decent and hopefully what they’ll find is a club that tries to do things in the right way. We’re very humble, respectful and we’ll try to be professional.”

The gulf between the clubs is huge. Manchester United’s turnover last season was £433.2m. Cambridge, in contrast, brought in £1.6m over the same period. Or, to put it another way, enough to pay Wayne Rooney’s wages for six weeks. With a significant six-figure sum generated from this FA Cup run – possibly as much as £500,000 – as well as the central funding that comes with being back in the Football League and the prospect of that windfall for their youth setup, George predicts turnover this season will climb above £3m.

“The FA Cup money is a huge help in terms of where we were going and where we want to go to. In the nine years outside of the Football League, the club probably lost £3m-£3.5m. That has been subsidised by the odd transfer – Michael Morrison, Dave Kitson [via a sell-on clause] – the odd windfall, but mostly from individuals who love the club putting money in. If it wasn’t for directors being willing to fund the club, it would never have survived for nine years in the Conference.”

In the eyes of many – if not the man himself – George has also played a major part in Cambridge’s renaissance. Dion Dublin, who started his career at the Abbey Stadium before moving to Manchester United, has described George as “the heart and soul of Cambridge United”. Dublin added: “Other than his family, I think that’s all [Jez] lives for, he wants them to be secure, safe and successful.”

“That’s nice of him but I can’t really comment on that,” George says. “I’ve never been a [professional] footballer but I love football. And I think you’re privileged if you can earn a living doing something you love. I think Confucius said if you find a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

“But it’s not just me at Cambridge. Look at Dave Doggett, Renford Sargent, Eddie Clark, Terry Baker, Paul Barry – all directors who have put a huge amount of time and money into this club. I haven’t got any money. So you put time in. You want the club to do well. I’ve got a passion for it and I’ve lived in Cambridge all my life.

“When they’ve been in such a difficult moment for so long, if there was one massive motivation, that was to try to help them get back into the Football League. The Manchester United game is an unbelievable bonus for the club but getting back into the League was everything.”