EXCLUSIVE | Mikaël Silvestre on Manchester United’s Leny Yoro: ‘He needs to impose himself at some point, so why not this season?’ | OneFootball

Get French Football News sat down with former Stade Rennais, Manchester United, Arsenal and France defender Mikaël Silvestre to look back at les Bleus performance at the recent World Cup, and to look at some potentially interesting prospects for the coming season.

In this second part, Mikaël looked at potential replacements for the injured William Saliba in the France squad, focussing on Ibrahima Konaté and Manchester United youngster Leny Yoro.

Let’s talk about your playing position, centre-back. Dayot Upamecano and William Saliba both performed very well. But Saliba is now out injured for several months. Who do you see him replacing him?

We have players who can come in. We have Maxence Lacroix, we have Ibrahima Konaté, in the U21s we have Leny Yoro. So we have the players to fill in for Saliba during this period, where we have qualifying matches. They have the ability to match their opponents and to give William the time to get back to full strength and fitness.  

Before the pre-World Cup warm-up matches I think we would have said that it’s Konaté who is the first replacement. But we saw during those matches and the World Cup itself that Lacroix leapfrogged him. Do you think that it’s justified? Do you think that Konaté has the ability to regain that place?

Konaté has the ability but it’s true that, as someone who watches a lot of Premier League, I saw that he lost form this season. Maybe it’s due to Liverpool having a difficult season. You shouldn’t forget that they lost their team-mate tragically, which maybe impacted some players more than others. We know that he also lost a parent too. So we don’t know what’s going on off the pitch, and it can maybe play on his performances, but it’s true that it wasn’t his best season personally, and that was the case too with les Bleus where he has played better games. And yes, in the hierarchy, he may have fallen a little behind Lacroix, but now he has a new challenge with Real Madrid, he’s going to start afresh, and I think he has the ability, the physical, technical and mental resources to become a solid challenger to Upamecano and Saliba.

You mentioned Leny Yoro, who is of course at your former club, Manchester United. I think that last year he played 32 matches in the Premier League, but almost half as substitute. He’s still very young, but he’s not yet established himself as first choice. Do you think that this could be a key season for him to take the next step up?

The first important thing is to be available to play and to not be injured, because he has had various injury niggles since he arrived. Whether it will be his breakthrough season I don’t know, but what is very good is that he is having a proper pre-season with no interruptions, and we’ll see – it’s up to the coach and there is a lot of competition, but he needs to impose himself at some point, so why not this season?

Mikaël Silvestre was speaking exclusively to Get French Football News courtesy of BetVictor Online Casino

GFFN | Jeremy Smith