- Man City still monitoring Iliman Ndiaye ahead of a potential summer move
- Ndiaye reportedly turned down a new Everton contract on multiple occasions
- Everton’s asking price is believed to be between £69m and £80m
Everton need a plan for this summer that is already made. Because once the World Cup starts, the market will stop waiting for anyone.
The Iliman Ndiaye situation has been building quietly for weeks. Now it is starting to get louder.
Manchester City are monitoring the 26-year-old, according to journalist Alan Nixon — a source with a strong track record on Everton stories — and they are not alone. Manchester United have had Ndiaye on their list for some time, per TEAMtalk. Everton’s position, at least publicly, is relaxed. Ndiaye is contracted until 2029. The club do not want to sell. There is nothing to see here.
Except there rather is.
Ndiaye has reportedly turned down a new contract. Not once. Multiple times. That is a significant detail that tends to get glossed over in the general narrative of clubs being relaxed about a player’s future. When your best winger repeatedly declines improved terms, relaxed is not really the right word for it.
Why Everton’s £69m-£80m asking price for Ndiaye is smart business — up to a point
Everton paid around £15m for Ndiaye in the summer of 2024. Their asking price is now reported to be somewhere between £69m and £80m — figures cited by multiple outlets including GiveMeSport and Business Upturn — a premium that reflects both his quality and the club’s desire to make any potential deal prohibitively difficult. That is smart business. Setting a high valuation is how you control a conversation you would rather not be having.
But it only works as a deterrent if the interested clubs are not willing to pay it. Manchester City, historically, tend to pay what they need to pay. And with Ndiaye heading into a World Cup in the form of his life, with his contract talks at a standstill and multiple clubs circling, Everton’s leverage in that conversation is not guaranteed to increase with time.
How the next four weeks of World Cup 2026 action could reshape Everton’s entire summer
The World Cup does not just put Ndiaye in a global shop window. It changes the entire dynamic of every conversation happening around him. A strong few weeks with Senegal and the £70m asking price starts to look like a bargain to clubs who were previously hesitating. Agents start working the phones. Bids that were theoretical become formal.
Everton need their decisions made before any of that happens — which players they will sell, which they will fight to keep, and which signings they are genuinely committed to making. The clubs who win summer windows are the ones who moved with conviction in June. Not the ones still working it out in August, wondering how a situation they thought they controlled quietly got away from them.
