Youri Tielemans Opens Up on Surprise Manchester United Move and Belgium’s World Cup Heartbreak

“Not really, no.” That is the answer Youri Tielemans gives when asked whether he expected to leave Aston Villa this summer, and it says everything about how quickly his move to Manchester United came together.

It is easy to forget that Manchester United swiftly and quietly signed a player with eight years of Premier League experience, arriving at what feels like the peak of his powers, for a release clause of just £35m. In his first interview after joining the club, Tielemans has opened up on exactly how the move came about, especially having been of interest to United on a few previous occasions too.

A deal that crept up on him

“There has been two times that I spoke with the club, but it did not achieve anything so I was just very calm about it,” Tielemans said. “It was mainly my agent that was dealing with it, I was more so focused on the World Cup which was a big thing for me. When it was time that it was accepted and acceptable, I would say then I was made aware.

“I was not expecting much a summer move, to be fair. I was just focused on my football, focused on the World Cup, trying to perform as best as I could for my country. Then every summer something can happen.”

Tielemans signed a five-year deal at Old Trafford. He had joined Villa as a free agent after leaving Leicester City following their relegation to the Championship, and a move to a conventional top-six club never seemed close at either previous club, which is part of why the switch to Manchester United came as such a surprise.

Did he ever think that kind of opportunity had passed him by? “Not really, because I know that at Villa we did amazing things,” Tielemans explained. “We achieved the Europa League win which was great for the club but there are still clubs above Aston Villa, and Manchester United is one of them.

“Especially at this moment, there is a very positive mood in and around the club so I am just hopeful that we can have a great story together. Aston Villa is a great club and I owe them the world. They have put me back at my best level so I am very thankful.”

Reuniting with Evans and Rashford

Tielemans is still getting used to his new surroundings, but he will have felt at ease knowing one member of staff extremely well: Jonny Evans. The former centre-back spent four and a half years alongside Tielemans at Leicester and is now a key part of Michael Carrick’s backroom staff at United.

Asked how it felt to be reunited with his old teammate, Tielemans could not resist a smile. “Jonny has always been a main character,” he said. “He has always been trying to educate young players and he welcomed me at Leicester and now here.

“It is a bit weird to see him as a staff member to be honest, but it is going great and he knows me, he knows what I need and what I can bring to the team so it helps me as well.”

Another relatively new teammate, though one Tielemans spent slightly less time with, is Marcus Rashford. The pair spent six months together when the England international joined Villa on loan for the second half of the 2024/25 season. Rashford has now been fully reintegrated into the Manchester United squad after his loan at Barcelona came to an end this summer.

Tielemans has only fond memories of their time together at Villa Park. “He was great. There had been so much talk about him and bringing pressure with the media around him, but I thought he was just so good,” he said.

“He was very humble, he was hard working and from the first training session, you could tell, his touch, his acceleration was amazing. That was just what we needed at the time at Villa as well so he did many good things and hopefully he can bring them here.”

An overloaded World Cup

Tielemans captained Belgium at this summer’s World Cup, where they were knocked out in the quarter-finals by eventual winners Spain. He was unable to play in that quarter-final after picking up an injury in the warm-up, though he says there are no lingering concerns for United fans to worry about ahead of the new season.

“It was just an overload of too many games, too many minutes and unfortunately my body could not cope with it anymore,” Tielemans said. “We played 120 minutes against Senegal and from there, we had less time in between games. We played the USA three or four days later, then three days after that, we played against Spain. In the warm-up, my body switched off for some reason.”

Before the injury struck, Tielemans had played a key role in Belgium’s tournament, scoring twice in their dramatic round-of-32 win over Senegal. That victory came after extra time, explaining part of the physical toll referenced above.

The Balogun controversy

Belgium’s most eventful game of the tournament came in the round of 16 against the United States. In one of the most contested decisions of the whole competition, USA striker Folarin Balogun’s red card was suspended for the tie, allowing him to feature. In the end it made no difference to the outcome, as Belgium won 4-1.

“Originally we were surprised by the decision to revert the red card and his suspension,” Tielemans said. “Now for us, it did not really change anything other than the preparation leading up to the game because it is a different type of player than the other player that was meant to play. Other than that, we were very calm and we just accepted our fate and tried to have a good game.”

From Anderlecht to Old Trafford

Tielemans made his name at Anderlecht as a teenager, becoming the youngest Belgian to ever play in the Champions League and winning the domestic title twice before Monaco took him to Ligue 1. Leicester signed him on loan in January 2019 before making the move permanent for around £32m, and he repaid that fee many times over, most memorably with that winning goal against Chelsea two years later.

He took over the Belgium captaincy in September 2025, inheriting the armband from Kevin De Bruyne under new head coach Rudi Garcia. Wearing it at a World Cup for the first time only added to what was already a demanding summer, and Belgium’s run to the quarter-finals ended painfully in Los Angeles, where Spain came from behind through Fabian Ruiz and a late Mikel Merino winner to beat Charles De Ketelaere’s Belgium 2-1, with Tielemans watching on injured and goalkeeper Thibault Courtois also forced off hurt.

Settling into a rebuild

United have made Tielemans one of several midfield additions this summer, alongside Andrey Santos, as Michael Carrick looks to add both control and physical presence to a squad still finding its identity under him. It is Carrick’s first full transfer window in charge, and the pairing of a proven Premier League operator like Tielemans with a younger, more explosive profile in Santos suggests a deliberate attempt to balance experience against upside in central midfield, an area United have picked apart and rebuilt more than once in recent seasons without settling on a long-term answer. Tielemans arrives with a Europa League winner’s medal and eight seasons of Premier League football behind him, first with Leicester, where he won an FA Cup, and then with Villa, where he helped return the club to European competition.

He has already featured for United in pre-season, including their meeting with Paris Saint-Germain, and the presence of a familiar face in Evans on the coaching staff appears to have eased what could otherwise have been an unsettling summer of change. Between a new club, a new coaching staff to learn and a World Cup campaign that ended in both personal frustration and continental heartbreak for Belgium, Tielemans has had little time to pause for breath from the moment the season ended in May.

What comes through most clearly in his first words as a United player is gratitude rather than urgency, for Villa, for the timing of the move and for the World Cup run that preceded it, even with how it ended. Whether that calm approach translates into an immediate role in Carrick’s midfield remains to be seen, but Tielemans, by his own account, has never been the type to force these moments. He simply waits for them to arrive.

For Old Trafford supporters still adjusting to another summer of turnover, Tielemans offers something rarer than a marquee name: a player who has already won a domestic cup on the biggest stage in England, captained his country at a World Cup, and, by his own telling, arrives without the burden of expectation that came with his previous moves. That combination of achievement and calm could prove exactly what a rebuilding midfield needs.