7 Former Manchester United stars who are still playing

#5 Rafael da Silva

The promising Brazilian joined Manchester United before the start of the 2008/09 season, along with his twin brother Fabio and immediately became a darling of Old Trafford due to his playing style and his display of passion on the field. Rafael played for seven seasons at United, appearing in 169 games and also scoring 5 goals, playing at right back.

He was quite successful at Manchester United and his ability to play as both right-back and left-back made him quite valuable to the club under Sir Alex, who even used him as a winger on a couple of occasions.

Rafael won three Premier Leagues, three Community Shields, one League Cup, and one FIFA World Cup with Manchester United, but saw his play chances diminish during his last season at Old Trafford. In August 2015, Rafael finally left United and joined Lyon.

He has since played 94 games for the Ligue 1 side in total, scoring 2 goals, but has not won any silverware with the club. Still only 28 years old, Rafael currently is still with Lyon.

About the author

Deepungsu is a veteran football journalist who has been covering daily transfer roundups and news for over six years at Sportskeeda. He has written close to 9000 articles for the website, and has garnered over 19.5Million reads.

Deepungsu holds a PG degree in Microbiology and an MBA degree in Total Quality Management. He has an extensive two-decade long writing experience, which includes a decade of sports blogging. His writing prowess has even led his work getting cited on the legendary Franz Beckenbauer's Wikipedia page.

Inspired by Diego Maradona, Deepungsu played as an attacking midfielder for his local club at subdivision level in his initial years and scored an important goal or two. However, his all-time favorite footballer is Lionel Messi, and evidently, he feels Argentina's glory in 2022 is his favorite FIFA World Cup moment for fulfilling his long-standing dream. He is also an ardent East Bengal fan.

Deepungsu has been a Manchester United supporter since the year 2000. Unsurprisingly, his favorite manager is Sir Alex Ferguson and the Scotsman helped him get through some of the toughest days of his life. Like the fiery Scot, Deepungsu also leaves no stone unturned when it comes to accuracy in articles and only relies on credible sources.

Despite believing in Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland to create an iconic rivalry, Deepungsu reckons no one can match the longevity of Messi and Ronaldo. He spends his leisure time writing about life on his blog, reading books, and playing the guitar.

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Edited by Abhinav Munshi