By his own admission, the Leeds United-linked Mandela Keita is quite the ‘unique’ talent.
An average of 2.3 successful tackles per game puts the Royal Antwerp loanee up there with the most effective ball-winning midfielders in the Belgian Jupiler League, per WhoScored. 20-year-old Keita, however, is keen to point out that there is more to his game than snaffling up loose balls and rattling bones.
The OH Leuven-owned youngster is not one of those who simply keeps the play ticking over, winning back possession before handing it over to his more gifted team-mates. Keita likens his style of play to that of both N’Golo Kante and Paul Pogba. The tenacity of the former and the technique of the latter, rolled into one 5ft 11ins frame.
“The fact that I try to combine the two makes me quite unique, I think,” he explains.
Leeds United like Royal Antwerp ace Mandela Keita
Het Laaste Nieuws claim that Keita’s fine form at Antwerp has caught the eye of Leeds. Reports backed up by Gazet van Antwerpen.
Blackburn Rovers and Norwich City are also checking out the one-time Sheffield United target, though his £9 million price-tag would likely be too expensive for a team without the riches of Premier League football at their disposal.
He may only turn 21 in May. But the swagger with which Keita plays marks him out as a mature head on young shoulders. There’s certainly a Pogba-esque confidence about the way he takes possession in tight spaces and manoeuvres himself out of danger with a swivel of his hips of a change of pace. An almost effortless elegance.
“He’s very intelligent and picks things up quickly,” Marc Brys, coach of Keita’s parent club Leuven, tells Het Nieuwsblad. “He listens and develops at a fairly high pace.
“He holds his own, leads and is often free (to receive the ball). Mandela Keita is a natural talent and plays on intuition.”
Weston McKennie replacement?
Keita has undoubtedly benefitted from a season alongside Mark van Bommel, the former Bayern Munich and Netherlands enforcer, at Antwerp. Leeds’ interest, meanwhile, may raise some rather probing questions about the future of Juventus loanee Weston McKennie.
Leeds would have to pay £35 million to sign the USA international on a permanent basis. Keita, meanwhile, can be snapped up for a third of that fee. And while McKennie does the ‘Kante’ part of his game pretty effectively, a ‘Pogba-like’ passing range remains a glaring omission from his skillset.
Keita’s pass completion rate stands at nearly 90 per cent according to WhoScored. A massive improvement upon McKennie’s 80 per cent average.
Younger, cheaper and far better in possession; if Leeds have already decided not to trigger McKennie’s eye-watering option-to-buy clause, then Keita may be an affordable and very astute alternative.
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