The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic’s daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox.
Hello! Manchester United have secured Leny Yoro. Have they secured a good price?
On the way:
🔀 Inside Yoro’s move to United
🤝 Savinho/Greenwood deals
❌ Everton takeover collapses
🥽 Liverpool’s goalkeeper goggles
Yoro wanted Madrid not Manchester move – so what happened?
As a rule, Real Madrid get who Real Madrid want. Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham; all Madrid have to do is flutter their eyelashes and pony up the cash.
So mark down Leny Yoro to Manchester United as a rare exception. United got their man yesterday, signing Yoro from Lille on a five-year contract. It’s mid-July and the club are almost £100m ($129m) deep in the transfer market having taken Joshua Zirkzee from Bologna last week.
Yoro is a project, an 18-year-old regarded as one of the most accomplished centre-backs for his age… anywhere. The list of clubs who fancied him — United, Madrid, Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain — speaks for itself. But it would be going some to say Yoro to Old Trafford was a conventional process:
- United have paid an initial £52m ($67m) for Yoro. The mad thing? Madrid’s highest offer was only half as much.
- Yoro’s desired destination was the Bernabeu. The Athletic has been told his top three moves were “Madrid this summer, Madrid in the coming season’s January window or Madrid next year.”
- The defender’s camp feared Lille would not play him if he held out for a low-ball switch to Spain. That concern motivated Yoro to accept United’s offer.
Yoro’s contract at Lille was up in 2025, hence why Madrid saw United’s bid as too high. The deal is a feather in the cap for United, and they’ve beaten the Champions League holders to a key target. But have they overpaid?
Yoro’s strengths
Yoro made Ligue 1’s team of the year for the 2023-24 season. United’s midfield is where their biggest weaknesses lie but Yoro’s anticipation of danger might allow Erik ten Hag to use a higher defensive line, negating the cavernous gaps between his back four and his midfield unit.
Our transfer rating system has Yoro down at 346/500, which is a steady if not spectacular score. He’s young and United have gone big on the fee. There’s also no getting away from the fact that the club have a history of getting poor value for money.
A case in point: Donny van de Beek. Bought for £40m from Ajax in 2020, made six league starts and was sold to Girona a week ago for £423,000 ($542,000). They’ll hope for far stronger returns from Yoro.
Real regret?
Madrid have a modus operandi in hooking talent such as Yoro. They butter up the players and sell the move to them. Then they look for those players to tell their existing clubs that they only have eyes for the Bernabeu.
Often, it’s a fait accompli.
But not with Yoro. Lille held firm and got their windfall. They were vehemently opposed to the thought of losing Yoro for nothing next year, or of accepting a low offer from Spain.
Madrid need a centre-back and we’ll see where they go from here. But with Mbappe and Endrick arriving, I don’t see this saga hampering Carlo Ancelotti badly.
Transfer Tracker: What will Savinho bring to Man City?
With the Euros and the Copa America done, the transfer market is definitely getting warmer:
News round-up
CBS strikes four-year deal to screen EFL matches
Broadcasters in the United States have been piling into Premier League TV contracts for a long time, and at increasing expense. CBS is now going further down the English pyramid after striking a four-year deal to cover the EFL, snatching the rights from ESPN.
The EFL lacks the razzmatazz of the Premier League but it’s massively well-followed, particularly the Championship. The EFL is also flooded with U.S. ownership groups. I covered one at Leeds United. Wrexham’s Hollywood flavour has given them unimaginable global appeal.
Lower-league clubs are incredibly keen for any exposure they can get. For years, the EFL’s TV deals have trailed miles behind the value of the Premier League’s, but this should close the gap slightly and, in competitive terms, that’s no bad thing.
Goalkeepers and goggles
Just when you think innovation in football has nowhere left to go, up pops a video of a Liverpool training session in which one of their goalkeepers, Marcelo Pitaluga, looks like Neo from The Matrix.
Pitaluga was wearing shades on the instructions of Liverpool’s new goalkeeping coach, Fabian Otte. Between the sunglasses and noise-cancelling headphones, the theory is that training in compromised circumstances can heighten the senses and enhance performance in actual matches.
Otte isn’t making this stuff up. He’s published university research about his techniques. What amused me was the cost of the equipment: sub-£30 ($39) as it stands. If the shades catch on, somebody will soon find a way of coining it.
Turan Talks: Wanting to change football and winning ‘hardest title in sports history’
Nick Miller’s interview with Arda Turan recalls the ex-Barcelona and Atletico Madrid midfielder throwing a boot at an assistant referee, firing a gun in a hospital and getting mixed up in an incident which left a pop star with a broken nose.
Management material, clearly — which is why he’s in charge of Turkey’s Eyupspor. A few highlights for you:
🗣️ “I was very aggressive. If a coach tried to manage that, it would be over.”
🗣️ On Atletico winning La Liga in 2014: “It was a team of players with balls. Atletico being champions was the hardest title in sports history.” Fair enough.
🗣️ “Rather than being the second man in Rome, I am the leader of my village.”
🗣️ “I want to change the style of football in Turkey. We will change football in this country.”
I’m looking forward to him hitting the coaching mainstream.
Quiz Question
Leny Yoro was born six days before Ruud van Nistelrooy’s only Premier League goal from outside the box — in November 2005.
Van Nistelrooy remains the division’s highest-scoring player to boast just one goal from distance (of 95 overall). Can you name the three highest-scoring Premier League players never to score from outside the penalty area? CLUE: one is ex-Manchester United…
The answer will be here later today — and in Monday’s TAFC.
Got a question/feedback? Email us: theathleticfc@theathletic.com
(Top photo: Sebastien Salom-Gomis/AFP via Getty Images)
