5 replacements for Laurent Koscielny in the France national team

Modified May 04, 2018 10:29 GMT

Koscielny could be out of the World Cup

#2 Aymeric Laporte

Laporte has impressed since signing for City in January

Manchester City's club record signing who arrived from Athletic Bilbao in January, Aymeric Laporte could go on to become one of the best centre-backs in the world by the time he hits his peak.

At 23 years of age, he has already appeared in excess of 250 top-flight games. As is typical of Guardiola's players, Laporte is excellent on the ball and his immaculate passing helps his teams play out from the back without any hitches.

His pace and agility help him deputise at left-back. Though he's not the greatest tackler of the ball, Laporte makes up for it with his positioning.

At 191 cms, he is reasonably tall and has the ability to win aerial balls is an added plus. Laporte's pass completion rate in the Premier League up until this point is a whopping 93%, which would be immensely impressive for a midfielder!

Guardiola has immediately made Laporte a better player and given that he has played his hand in City's title run, this would be the perfect time to integrate him into the France national team.

About the author

Shambhu is a European and international football journalist at Sportskeeda who focuses on previews, listicles and news articles. An ardent Manchester United supporter since before his teenage years, he started following the Red Devils by age 10 watching MUTV on television. Shambhu is also a highly-revered rapper and a playback singer on Spotify, having a whopping 1 million monthly listeners.

For his articles, Shambhu believes in triple-checking every piece of information, relying on trusted websites like Transfermarkt and Opta, and staying away from speculative publications. He believes that his law degree helped him to be more articulate and meticulous with his content and one of his core strengths is seamlessly involving emotion in his write-ups owing to the love for the sport. For Sportskeeda, has done exclusive interviews with Spanish legends Gaizka Mendieta and Fernando Morientes so far, and his articles boast of a huge readership of close to 50 million.

Shambhu's favorite footballer is Lionel Messi, and the Argentine attaining glory in 2022 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment. He believes only Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland could replicate Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo's rivalry in the years to come. His favorite manager is Sir Alex Ferguson due to the Scot's unmatched longevity at the top.

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Edited by Amit Mishra