Manchester United have submitted an initial £5m bid to sign young Japanese-Ghanian goalkeeper Zion Suzuki from Urawa Red Diamonds, according to reports in Japan, as Erik ten Hag pushes to sign two new goalkeepers before the season begins.
United are expected to sign Andre Onana from Inter Milan in the coming hours following a breakthrough in talks, but head coach Ten Hag is pushing for a back-up stopper to also arrive with the expectation that David de Gea has played his last game for the club.
De Gea’s future remains up in the air after he became a free agent last week following a saga in which he was offered a new contract that was subsequently pulled.
Should Suzuki join the Old Trafford club he will be viewed as a back-up option who they hope can eventually develop into a challenger for first-choice. The 20-year-old has earned one cap for the Japan senior team but was also eligible to play for Ghana via his father, while he was born in the United States.
But the Suzukis moved to Japan while he was a child and he joined the Red Diamonds academy as a seven-year-old and became their youngest professional when penning a full-time deal at 16. His J-League debut arrived in May 2021 and he has made eight starts for the club, keeping four clean sheets.
Meanwhile Dean Henderson is expected to miss United’s pre-season tour of the United States as he pushes to be sold. The goalkeeper is expected to complete a £30m move to Nottingham Forest having spent last season on loan with Steve Cooper’s team, making 18 appearances before injuring a thigh.
Henderson has known for some time that he is not part of Ten Hag’s plans and might not be on the plane to America for four games against Arsenal, Wrexham, Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund. United are set to face Leeds in Oslo next week and they will also play Lyon in Edinburgh and Athletic Bilbao in Dublin in the space of four weeks.
The 26-year-old's relationship with the club’s hierarchy was strained following controversial comments made by the one-cap England international last summer. In an interview with Talksport, Henderson described his treatment by United as “criminal” and claimed he had been promised the role of first-choice at Old Trafford only for the club to renege.
"To be honest, it has probably been the toughest 12 months of my career,” Henderson said. “It was frustrating, because I turned down so many good loans last summer for that reason, and they would not let me go.
"The conversation I had coming out of the Euros squad was: 'You're coming back here to be the number one.' I got Covid-19, came back, so I should have still been the number one but then nobody followed through with what they had told me.
"To sit there for 12 months, it is criminal really, at my age. I was fuming. I told the hierarchy that I need to be playing football and to let me go, and I was almost gone before the manager [Erik ten Hag] came through the door. I have not spoken to him since."
