Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe spotted wearing a smart strap during Leicester loss

Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe was spotted wearing a fitness tracker during Tuesday night’s 2-1 defeat against Leicester.

The United man played the full 90 minutes in the defeat at Old Trafford, which handed their arch-rivals City the Premier League title.

Eagle-eyed fans spotted that Tuanzebe was wearing a black strap on his wrist concealed by his sleeve throughout the match.

Axel Tuanzebe wore a smart strap during Manchester United’s defeat to Leicester on Tuesday

Leicester won 2-1 at Old Trafford to hand United’s rivals City the Premier League title

What’s a WHOOP strap?

WHOOP is a 24/7 fitness tracker and health monitor that provides personalised, actionable feedback and tracks key metrics like heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep staging with industry-leading accuracy.

The device distills all of this data down into three key pillars – recovery, strain and sleep – and provides coaching so users can balance their daily lives, train optimally and unlock the secrets to their body’s true potential.

Who else wears WHOOP?

There are currently a number of players in the Premier League wearing WHOOP, and is also popular with athletes such as Rory McIlroy, Owen Farrell, Andy Murray, Tom Daley, Maria Sharapova and many more.

WHOOP also has a number of partnerships including the PGA, LPGA, CrossFit and NFL Players’ Association, and is approved for in-game use in the MLB.

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Tuanzebe’s device appeared to be an Onyx ProKnit band created by American company WHOOP.

The WHOOP bands are said to be widely used by athletes while they offer personalized coaching to help them optimize training and sleep with device gathering data on muscle strain, heart rate and sleep metrics.

Some fans on social media hilariously thought that Tuanzebe was wearing an Apple Watch on his wrist.

One user wrote: ‘Is Tuanzebe wearing an Apple Watch or am I losing it?’

Another fan joked: ‘Would be so funny if someone called Tuanzebe and his Apple Watch started going off on the pitch.’

Although it is rare to see players wear these smart straps during games, Premier League and Championship clubs are now widely using similar technological devices to track the fitness of their squad and help them to make decisions.

Despite United’s defeat, Tuanzebe was one of the best performers on Tuesday night for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men in what was just his second Premier League start of the season.

He could do nothing about Leicester’s opening goal though, with Luke Thomas striking a superb volley past David de Gea in goal to break the deadlock in the first half.

Mason Greenwood restored parity before Caglar Soyuncu’s thumping header claimed all three points for Leicester and all but confirmed their spot in next season’s Champions League.