Why United were right to break the bank for £73m ‘maverick’ Sancho
Hcoaches who developed the winger at youth level describe a game-changing talent who hit new heights with Dortmund
You can hear the excitement in Jan Siewert’s voice when Jadon Sancho’s name is mentioned, but the story that springs most readily to his mind about Manchester United’s £73million signing has less to do with a daring dribble or goal or any other show-stopping turn on the pitch.
It was Sancho’s reaction to being told he would not be allowed to play in the knockout rounds for England Under-17s at the World Cup four years ago because Borussia Dortmund, who had signed him from Manchester City five weeks earlier, wanted him back in Germany for a reserve team game. It would mean missing the final against Spain, which England won 5-2, but Sancho never allowed his disappointment at being denied the chance to take part get the better of him. On the eve of the final, he sent a heartfelt good luck message on the squad’s Whatsapp group, spelling out his belief in each player.
“You never know how often in your life you can play a final and then you come back [to Germany] and you’re not even playing in the first team, you’re playing in the second team,” said Siewert, the former Huddersfield manager who was then in charge of Dortmund’s under-23 side. “But he still put every effort into the game and so enjoyed it when he was playing. It could have been the other way around, but it wasn’t. That said a lot about Jadon. He was really disappointed for not being with England but, despite that, he was still so professional when we spoke together and in how he behaved.”
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s long wait to see Sancho flying down the wing in United colours should finally be over tomorrow, with the England winger in line for his debut against Leeds United at Old Trafford.
United’s hierarchy were informed within weeks of Solskjaer taking temporary charge in December 2018 that, given the opportunity, Sancho was a player he would love to bring to the club, but the manager’s hopes of doing so last summer ended in disappointment. At that point, it would have been easy for Solskjaer to pursue other targets, but Sancho was who he wanted and he was prepared to bide his time.
It could all have been very different had United taken up the chance to sign Sancho as a 14-year-old, a year before he eventually joined rivals City from Watford in 2015. But they passed on a recommendation from Alex Cargill, one of Sancho’s earliest coaches at Watford’s development centre in Battersea, who used to play football with the player’s father, Sean. Given what United have ended up paying for Sancho, one could argue it was a costly oversight, but Sancho lasted just two years at City before taking the bold decision to move to Dortmund in pursuit of regular first-team football, and there are no guarantees he would not have followed the same path had he been at United back then.
In hindsight, it was probably the best career move Sancho could have made. He experienced a new culture and a foreign league and went on to play 137 firstteam games for Dortmund, scoring 50 goals and claiming 64 assists, becoming a trailblazer in the process. Jude Bellingham followed suit from Birmingham three years later and Noni Madueke, who left Tottenham Hotspur for PSV Eindhoven in 2019, is another emerging English talent who, thanks to Sancho, realised there may be greater opportunities overseas.
For some, though, Sancho’s move to the Westfalenstadion was less of a surprise. “I remember taking him home from training one day and it was really cold so I gave him my jacket,” Cargill recalls. “When he looked at the badge on the coat he said, ‘I’m going to play for this team one day’. It was Dortmund. He was about seven at the time. So seeing him go there from City 10 years later I was wondering if it was divine intervention or something!”
Cargill, fellow coaches Julian Roberts and Dave Godley, who oversaw Sancho’s transition from Battersea to Watford’s academy at under-nine, did well just to keep the young Sancho out of the clutches of London’s biggest clubs.
“Jadon could have signed for Arsenal and I had to convince his dad Sean and mum Gemma not to send him there but to us,” Cargill says. “Part of the selling point was Watford were affiliated to the Harefield Academy, a really good school, so there were lifelong implications in the argument we posed in terms of education.
“Football was the vehicle to try to steer them in the right direction in terms of having fruitful careers in something, because at that age you just don’t know if they’ll make it as footballers. But if you’re looking at a crop of 1,000 kids then Jadon’s probably the one you would pick out.”
From the moment Cargill watched a ball loop over a five-yearold Sancho’s left shoulder and this prodigious talent crack a right foot volley at goal he knew he had something special in his midst, and those feelings were soon shared by Godley. “He stood out like a sore thumb,” Godley says. “He had tremendous disguise on the ball, without doing complicated tricks which many kids would do at that age. He would lose a player with simple body movements or manipulating the ball with the sole of his foot. He stopped and started with the ball in tight areas, causing opponents to dive in or foul, and he rarely lost it. And he was so competitive.”
Cargill would remember Sancho running off into the bushes to cry if he lost but, above all else, it was the player’s “I want to succeed” attitude that resonated.
It was at the Croatia Under-17 Cup in the autumn of 2016, when England beat the hosts 5-0 before thrashing Germany 8-1, that Dortmund first laid eyes on Sancho and, over the course of the next 12 months, the winger exploded. He was named player of the tourna
‘He stood out like a sore thumb. He would lose a player with simple body movements’
ment at the Under-17 European Championship, when England lost to Spain on penalties in the final in May 2017, a defeat they would avenge at the World Cup five months later.
But it was a 4-0 win over Slovenia on an atrocious pitch in March that year that stuck out for some, not least when the opposition coach, Anton Zlogar, looked across at his English counterpart, Steve Cooper, and just started laughing with a rampant Sancho taking his team apart.
He may be a box of tricks, but all those nutmegs and pirouettes are done with a purpose and Cooper and others have long talked about Sancho’s ability to routinely make the right decision with the ball, a “maverick in the best sense” as one source put it.
Sancho’s time at Dortmund was not without the occasional disciplinary issue, but Siewert believes the
club provided the perfect breeding ground.
“I think if you have such an outstanding player you have to take him as an individual because these individuals decide games,” Siewert says. “So if you accept he may not always be in quite the right pressing situation, but he’ll give you goals, then judge him on that.
“Players who decide games, they need their freedom in a way, but if they believe in the structure around them they will work very hard and it worked for Jadon.
“I think it’s also important to accept those exceptional players maybe need to be treated a little bit differently to all the others. But the others will accept it if there’s a percentage gain and if you look at Jadon’s statistics at Dortmund they were incredible.”
Siewert expects Sancho to recover quickly from the disappointment of missing a penalty in
England’s Euro 2020 final shoot-out defeat by Italy last month and believes Old Trafford will quickly embrace a true crowd-pleaser.
“I definitely think Jadon can cope with the history of the club and the pressure on him now,” he says. “I felt really sorry for him not scoring that penalty for England, because I know he really suffered after it. He’s one who expects more from himself than any expectations from outside.”