‘Thank God we have Varane’: Man Utd fans hail incoming addition

Manchester United’s supporters have taken to social media in numbers on Saturday, to react to Eric Bailly essentially costing the Ivory Coast their spot in the Olympics.

Mir at the treble

The Elephants were in action a short time ago, getting their Olympic games campaign back underway in a quarter-final showdown with Spain.

Patrice Beaumelle’s men headed into proceedings with their tails up, on the back of a solid if unspectacular group stage showing, which saw the Ivory Coast remain unbeaten in a table featuring the talents of both Brazil and Germany.

In turn, when Max Gradel’s strike saw the African powerhouse take a 2-1 lead into injury time in Tokyo this afternoon, Beaumelle and co. looked set to maintain their status as potential dark horses to take home gold this summer.

Such aspirations, however, went firmly up in smoke with 93 minutes on the clock.

A whipped delivery into the Ivory Coast’s box saw star defender Eric Bailly first make a mess of his attempted headed clearance, before inexcusably allowing the ball to bounce, teeing up Rafa Mir to lash home from close range.

The clash, in turn, rolled into extra-time, with Spain, from here, having simply taken over.

Bailly was again the man at the centre of the controversy in setting La Roja on their way, though, giving away the penalty which allowed the Euro 2020 semi-finalists to take the lead through Mikel Oyarzabal.

And substitute Mir went on to add some gloss to the scoreline late on, notching a further brace to clinch a first-ever hat-trick at international level, and guide Spain into the Olympics’ final-4 in the process.

Varane > Bailly

On the back of the English coming to a close in the Japanese capital, meanwhile, it should come as little surprise to hear that the Manchester United faithful have since caught wind of Bailly’s latest display.

The stopper actually opened the afternoon’s scoring on Saturday, but the errors which Bailly has, to this point in his career, been unable to eradicate from his game, ultimately cost his country dear.

Raphael Varane’s imminent arrival at Old Trafford has, in turn, been widely highlighted across social media, with Red Devils supporters evidently no longer trusting in the talents of their own error-prone centre-half: