Leny Yoro's Crucial Season at Manchester United: A Path to Center-Back
Leny Yoro has been at Manchester United for two seasons now, long enough for the anticipation to harden into impatience. The talent that persuaded the club to beat Real Madrid to his signature has surfaced only in flashes. This season, it can no longer stay hidden.
He began pre-season out of position, shunted to right-back in the defeat to Wrexham. It was a functional outing, nothing more, but it underlined one thing: he is fit, he is present, and he is on the pitch while others are not. In July, that matters.
With the big names still away, Michael Carrick is expected to take a similar group to Trondheim to face Rosenborg as the one that travelled to Helsinki to meet Wrexham. That likely means another stint at right-back for Yoro. It is not where he wants to be. It might be exactly where his season starts.
These early friendlies are about running in the legs and rhythm in the lungs. They are also about proximity. By reporting back to Carrington on day one of pre-season, Yoro has already edged ahead in the queue for the opening Premier League fixture away to Hull City. Others will arrive later. He is already in front of the manager.
Defensive Line
For now, Harry Maguire and Ayden Heaven hold the central roles. They started together at centre-back against Wrexham and could keep that partnership against Rosenborg. Behind them, Matthijs de Ligt continues his rehabilitation from back surgery at Carrington and will miss the start of the new campaign. One less body in the way.
Lisandro Martinez completes what, on paper, looks like a formidable defensive core for Carrick. But his summer has been far from straightforward. Named in the team of the tournament at the World Cup, he finished it with his shirt over his face, forced off by injury and left to process the agony on the biggest stage. He has since gone on holiday, a sign the issue is not thought to be serious, yet as of Wednesday he still did not know the full extent of the problem.
Even if Martinez gets the all-clear and returns to training in early August, sharpness is another battle entirely. With United’s Premier League campaign starting on August 22, it is unlikely he will be fully up to speed in time to start against newly-promoted Hull. That opens up a vacancy alongside Maguire at the MKM Stadium.
Heaven, 19, is the natural left-footed mirror to Martinez. Stylistically, the comparison is easy to make. But within the club, Yoro is viewed as further along in his development than the former Arsenal centre-back. When United paid £52 million to prise him from Lille in the summer of 2024, at just 18, they were not buying a long-term project alone. They were buying someone they expected to be a regular by now.
It has not happened. Not yet. Across two Premier League seasons he has started only 30 games, his promise surfacing in glimpses rather than long, authoritative stretches of form. The label that followed him from France – one of the best young defenders in the world – still feels like a forecast rather than a description.
At the time of his arrival, United sporting director Dan Ashworth framed the deal in glowing terms. “Leny is one of the most exciting young defenders in world football; he possesses every attribute needed to develop into a top-class centre-back,” he said. Those attributes have not disappeared. Pace. Timing. Composure. The raw material is intact.
What is missing is the stage. Since joining United, Yoro has been named on the bench in the Premier League 28 times. Too often he has watched, tracksuit on, as others played through good days and bad. To become the “top-class centre-back” his club still believes he can be, he has to break that cycle. He has to take a shirt and keep it.
He turns 21 in November, a milestone that arrives at a moment of change beyond Old Trafford as well. France are set for a new era, with Zinedine Zidane due to replace Didier Deschamps. For a defender of Yoro’s profile, the timing is obvious. This season offers a pathway to two dressing rooms: United’s and the French national team.
Start against Hull, perform, and the tone of his year shifts immediately. Carrick’s success last season was built on a ruthless consistency in selection. Once he settled on his strongest XI, he rarely tinkered, and players on the fringes – Yoro among them – were left waiting for injuries, suspensions or the odd cup rotation to open the door.
At the heart of that preferred side stood Maguire and Martinez. When everyone is fit, they remain the most likely pairing. De Ligt, once recovered, will arrive with his own point to prove and his own reputation to defend. The competition is real, and it is not going away.
Yet within the club there is a sense of what the future should look like. Yoro and Heaven as the long-term axis. Youthful, aggressive, complementary. Maguire has spoken privately of the potential for them to become United’s answer to Gabriel and William Saliba at Arsenal, a duo who have grown into the standard-setters of the Premier League’s best defence.
For that vision to move from theory to reality, Yoro must turn this season into his. The circumstances are aligning: De Ligt out, Martinez uncertain, Heaven still learning, Carrick searching for reliable early-season solutions. Yoro may be starting the summer stationed at right-back, but the real battle lies straight ahead of him, in the middle.
If he walks out at the MKM Stadium on opening day as a centre-back, not a stop-gap full-back, he will not just be filling a gap. He will be staking a claim that has been two years in the making.
