Nottingham Forest 2-2 Manchester United match reaction and review
Manchester United are one of three Premier League teams linked with a €50m striker who struggled at Barcelona - but could still become one of the world’s best.
Regardless of whether Benjamin Šeško’s first season at Old Trafford ends up being regarded as a success or a failure, it looks likely that the Slovenian will have competition to play up front for Manchester United at some point over the next year or so. Unless the rumour mill is a long way wide of the mark, the Red Devils are firmly in the market for another striker.
Stories connecting United with a slew of different centre-forwards have been springing up across the media, and while many are no doubt erroneous it seems certain that the club’s recruitment team want to find extra firepower up front and to move on from Joshua Zirkzee, who seems likely to leave in January.
A new report, which has cropped up in several outlets, suggests that United could be in the market for Vitor Roque – a 20-year-old striker who has already endured a brief and ill-starred spell with Barcelona, but who has been brilliant back in Brazil. A second chance with a major European side seems certain to come around at some stage, but will it be United? Or could Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur be the ones to take that gamble instead?
Why Manchester United might want to sign former Barcelona flop Vitor Roque
Barcelona spent a reported €30m (£26.4m) plus add-ons to sign Vitor Roque from Atlético Paranaense when he was still only 18 years old. The teenage striker had just scored 21 goals in 45 games in the 2023 season, was starring for Brazil’s Under-20s, and had been earmarked by many qualified observers as a superstar in the making. He would not live up to that billing at the Camp Nou, however.
Vitor Roque never impressed Xavi Hernández, the club’s manager at the time, and was given just two league starts across his entire debut season. He ended up with a mere two goals but only played the equivalent of three-and-a-half matches’ worth of minutes. Reduced to intermittent cameo appearances and never given a chance to settle in and get regular minutes, he was branded a failure before he had even turned 19.
A loan spell at Real Betis failed to get him into the groove he was looking for and he was packed back off to Brazil two years after landing in Spain, sold to Palmeiras for €25.5m (£22.4m) – a record transfer for the whole of South America, but still a net loss for Barcelona.
Back in his home country, however, Vitor Roque has started to spread his wings again. He’s scored 13 goals in 28 games for Palmeiras, helping them to open up a lead as they chase another Brazilian championship, and his link-up play has been superb. He is, once again, starting to look like the striker he promised to be before he ran aground in Catalonia.
The striker may not cut an obviously imposing figure at 5’8” tall, but his strength, balance and low centre of gravity, combined with a fine first touch, make him a powerful ball carrier and an impressive hold-up player, while his instinctive grasp of space and accurate passing mean he acts as an effective creator as well as a finisher.
The stats are impressive. His 13 Série A goals have come from just 11.2xG (including one penalty) and he has three assists, helped along by his creation of an average of over three shooting chances per game for his team-mates. He is a highly efficient goalscorer while knowing how to bring those around him into play to bring the best out of them, as well.
As a striker who prefers to stay close to the penalty area, he has certain hints of Ruud van Nistelrooy, another predatory finisher whose ability to link up with the players around him was often underappreciated. The question is whether, like Van Nistelrooy, he can recreate those performances at the highest level and not just in his home country. Is that a question that United will give Vitor Roque a chance to answer?
Will Manchester United bid for Vitor Roque in 2026 – or could Chelsea or Spurs make a move?
Vitor Roque’s name has come up in connection with United through a number of different sources in recent days – most recently in Spanish outlet Mundo Deportivo and in British tabloid The Mirror. But when following attribution back to its source, it seems that the story may not have an especially promising genesis.
While both media outlets mentioned above cite Sports Illustrated, it appears as though they themselves reported the rumour as originating with Fichajes, a Spanish rumour website which is, in our opinion, an extremely unreliable source for transfer stories.
Their story claims that United could be prepared to spend around €50m (£44m) on the Brazilian, a figure repeated in later variations of the story. That probably isn’t an entirely unreasonable figure given Palmeiras’ initial outlay, or the fact that he is under contract until 2029.
Given that United are clearly prepared to spend considerable sums on younger players such as Leny Yoro or Šeško himself, it isn’t the kind of deal that the club are likely to shy away from, and the upside seems to be extremely high if they can offer the kind of environment and opportunities that Barcelona declined to after signing him two years ago. Still, while the broad brushstrokes of the story make sense, the sourcing is perhaps dubious.
Interestingly, Mundo Deportivo’s report also claims that both Chelsea and Spurs could be interested in the Brazilian, with the London-based pair said to have him “on their radar.” Little further detail is offered and there is not yet any corroboration for the claim, but that detail is not lifted from Fichajes but comes from Mundo Deportivo’s own sources.
None of Britain’s more reliable media outlets have yet to put their weight behind the stories linking Vitor Roque with a move to the Premier League, but he has evident talent, abundant quality and in a world in which many top-flight sides are falling over themselves to spend big on young players, it’s easy to imagine such a move taking place, whether in January at the end of the Brazilian season or next summer. Whether it actually does – and who might be the team that takes the chance – remains to be seen.
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