What shirt number Amad Diallo could wear for Man Utd

Manchester United are unlikely to spend big in January, but the squad will have at least one new face as teenage winger Amad Diallo completes his pre-arranged move from Atalanta.

United agreed a deal worth an initial £19m, potentially rising to more than £37m with add-ons, with Atalanta for Diallo in October, pending a successful work permit application.

The young talent, born in Ivory Coast but raised in Italy since childhood, has since been granted an Italian passport and citizenship, making the process more of a formality.

Diallo has already made an impact in Italy, becoming the first player born in 2002 to score in Serie A when he found the net on his Atalanta debut in October 2019. He has also since played in the Champions League and has been a regular feature of matchday squads this season.

It hasn’t yet been decided whether Diallo will be part of the first-team squad or initially start with the Under-23 setup until he gets more settled in a new club and country.

Fellow 18-year-old Facundo Pellistri, who arrived in October, has largely been with the Under-23s so far. However, he has also trained with the first-team, has featured in senior matchday squads – despite not making his debut, and has been assigned a first-team squad number, 28.

The likelihood is that Diallo will get similar treatment to begin with.

The rising star has several vacant shirts available to him when he arrives. The most obvious are 19, last worn by Marcus Rashford in 2017/18, and 20, made famous by manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer during his illustrious Old Trafford playing career.

Beyond those, 30 currently lies vacant, as do 32, 35, 36, 37 and 40.

There have been speculative murmurings that Diallo could plump for 79, which is the same jersey he wears for Atalanta. This, however, is unlikely to happen for a couple of reasons.

While the Premier League doesn’t have strict rules on shirt numbers like La Liga or Ligue 1, league officials did intervene when Swansea tried to register loan signing Renato Sanches with his preferred number 85 shirt in 2017. It was explained at the time that first-team shirt numbers should run roughly consecutively and not be massively removed from the rest of the squad.

It is common nowadays for academy players to be assigned squad numbers that will obviously run into the high figures, which is why Teden Mengi made his first-team debut last season wearing 72. But the Premier League is unlikely to allow that for Diallo because, even though he may start at Under-23 level, his significant price tag and reputation makes him an obvious first-team signing.

The other more definitive reason Diallo probably won’t be granted the 79 shirt is because 16-year-old Norwegian Isak Hansen, brought in from Tromso over the summer, already has it.

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