Manchester United in contact with £43m ace as he’s labelled new Raphael Varane

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Manchester United could replace Raphael Varane with a defender who plays just like him as the Premier League giants eye up the £43 million-rated Lille starlet Leny Yoro ahead of the January transfer window.

12 years after a teenage Raphael Varane left Lens for Real Madrid, 18-year-old Leny Yoro could follow in his footsteps, swapping Ligue 1 for another of Europe’s big-hitters before his 20th birthday.

According to French publication Le10 Sport, Manchester United and arch rivals City have both initiated ‘contact’ with Lille already, but a club who sold Nicolas Pepe, Eden Hazard, Rafael Leao, Sven Botman and Victor Osimhen for big fees are in no mood to let the teenage centre-half eave on the cheap.

Manchester United in Leny Yoro race

Yoro, who also has admirers at Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich and Real themselves, is valued at a minimum of £43 million despite only making his first-team debut as recently as May 2022.

And, speaking to Le Parisien, a source who knows Yoro sees no reason why he cannot achieve what Varane has at the very highest level, a rather gangly 6ft 3ins frame belying his physical prowess.

“He could pass for someone fragile but he is a monster,” the source explains.

“When I saw Leny Yoro, he was a portrait of Raphael Varane. The same attitude, the same potential, the same maturity at the same age, the same size…

“Kids like that are holy bread.”

We assume that means they are pretty hard to find.

The new Raphael Varane

Yoro, who only turned 18 in November, has three goals in 20 first-team appearances this season, his reputatuon growing after a stellar display in the weekend’s 1-1 draw with PSG. His Lille team-mate Remy Cabella sees similarities with another defender who shot to fame as a teenager across the Channel; the now-Arsenal colossus William Saliba.

“At Marseille, I knew Boubacar Kamara, at Saint-Etienne, William Saliba and Wesley Fofana. And now there’s Leny Yoro,” Cabella tells the Ligue 1 website. “He has all the qualities and potential to do something huge.

“He’s very humble and that’s another of his strengths.”

Varane, meanwhile, is one of a number of senior players who could leave Man United in January, alongside Jadon Sancho, Casemiro, Anthony Martial and the Bundesliga-bound Donny van de Beek.