It seems that the highly rated young French defender Raphael Varane is apparently of to Real Madrid next season, according to Gervais Martel the president of RC Lens.
The 18 year old whose best position is at centre half has been one of the most talked-about youngsters across Europe after impressing for Lens after making his first-team debut in November
All the top clubs in Europe from Arsenal to Inter Milan have all been apparently keeping tabs on his progress and regardless of Lens’ relegation to Lique 2, Varane had been expected to move on this summer.
Martel according to France Football, has discussed Varane with Zinedine Zidane who of course if you didn’t know it happens to be a personal advisor to Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez.
Zidane of course has a strong influence at Real and there’s no doubt that under Perez’s instructions the former world player of the year has pulled out all the stops to seal the deal, so to speak.
However as Manchester United fans, we should not be too disappointed about this. Firstly we can’t buy all the top youngsters across the continent, no matter how rich and famous we are. You can only buy a certain amount of players and it’s not as if we don’t have talented young defenders at the club already.
Chris Smalling and Phil Jones stand out like a sore thumb at the head of the line for talented defenders at our club. Smalling of course had a great first season at Old Trafford and has come on leaps and bounds since joining from Fulham.
Jones of course has only just recently joined us for a fee reported to be in the region of £17million from our local neighbours Blackburn Rovers and already looks the part in the Premier League after some impressive displays over the last 2 seasons.
When you also add into the mix some of the young defenders in the reserves and academy teams such as Reece Brown (Wes’ brother) and Oliver Gill (Club Chief Executive David’s son) then there’s really no need for Varane at Old Trafford.
I’m not saying of course that Sir Alex Ferguson wouldn’t want him at Old Trafford, but with the young home-grown talent in defence that we’ve got, I am sure their progress more than makes up for seemingly missing out on Varane.
By Adam Dennehey – @ADennehey87
