Manchester United greats Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers have clubbed together to buy Salford City, subject to FA and league approval.
The deal for the club, who play in the Evo-Stik League Division One North, is due to be completed later in the summer.
Confirmation of a deal which has been rumoured for several weeks comes on the same day as United rejected reports suggesting members of the 'Class of 92' could front a takeover deal at Old Trafford.
The group have strong roots in the area, and hope they can help others in the area follow their dreams as they did.
"I had my first trial for Manchester United in Salford at age 11 and I will never forget how important that was to me," Gary Neville said. "Salford City FC to me represents those early years, the commitment, hunger, enthusiasm, desire and spirit of football and I am very excited about this venture."
With Giggs still an active player at United, Phil Neville on David Moyes' coaching staff and brother Gary involved with England, it is not yet known precisely what role they plan to take in their new venture, but it is understood there will be no immediate change to the management structure at Salford City.
Giggs added: "Everyone knows how important Salford is to me, so this is an exciting acquisition that is right at the heart of what we all believe in.
"We want to engage the football community, use our football experience and knowledge to aspire and nurture young talent and being able to do that in Salford makes it even more exciting."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article