When the big clubs see something they like, they don’t hang about. Raphaël Varane was just a sparkle in the eye of Lens fans when Real Madrid signed the then 18-year-old for €10m back in 2011, right under the noses of Manchester United.
“I hurtled down on the train from Euston to Lille to sign the young French defender Varane,” Sir Alex Ferguson wrote in his 2015 book Leading. “David Gill [the club’s then CEO] was getting into the finer points of the contract with Lens when Zinedine Zidane got wind of this and somehow scooped him up for Real Madrid from under our noses.”