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Complete at 16: Yoro’s beginnings

“When I knew him in the beginning aged 16, he was a very complete player.”

Jocelyn Gourvennec was the Lille manager who gave Yoro his professional debut in the 2021/22 season.

Lille have a long history of producing sensational youth talent – Eden Hazard, Benjamin Pavard, Lucas Digne and Franck Ribery are but a few players who came through Les Dogues’ academy structure – but none of them came through as young as Yoro.

Lille’s situation was relatively desperate. The reigning Ligue 1 champions at the time only had an 18-player squad to compete across the league and Champions League – so Yoro was fast-tracked into first-team training.

“I used players older than Leny in the beginning during the first three or four months, afterwards the president told me to look at a younger player, who was only 16,” Gourvennec tells Sky Sports.

“We took him only in training for the beginning and it was surprising – because he was very tidy and calm.”

Yoro did not just impress Lille’s coaching staff, but his new first-team colleagues too. Gourvennec called on the opinions of Jose Fonte, Renato Sanches and Burak Yilmaz on their new academy product.

“It’s important to ask the experienced players what they are thinking, all of them were definitely convinced by him,” Gourvennec adds.

“They said: ‘he’s only 16, it’s difficult to play every game now. But you know in one or two years he will be an important player.’”

Yoro had to wait for his chance – more experienced heads such as Fonte, Sven Botman and Tiago Djalo were ahead of him in the defensive pecking order.

But when he made his professional debut in a 3-1 win over Nice in May 2022, Yoro became Lille’s second-youngest player – and their youngest debutant since Hazard.

His promising career had begun.