Perhaps the most telling Jadon Sancho clip to emerge from a wonderfully creative attacking performance during Borussia Dortmund’s Champions League semi-final first leg was the one that appeared after the match.
This was Sancho’s interview on CBS sports with a visibly buzzed-up Jamie Carragher, who had spent the evening pushing the broadcasting envelope by drinking eight pints of beer in the Yellow Wall end and was able afterwards to provide a real-time demonstration of just how hard it is to do the job of professional broadcaster while drunk. Belated respect for the scotch-sodden Ron Burgundy‑style anchor gods of yesteryear. It’s clearly not as easy as it looks.
By the end, the major point of interest in Carragher’s interview was the way it resembled an AI simulation designed to capture in a single haunting tableau the energies and noises-off that have disoriented Sancho’s career. Picture bot: create an image that shows Jadon Sancho being pawed at by an excitable media personality raving over a high-grade restorative performance, while unseen voices guffaw off camera and Sancho looks as if he really would rather be anywhere else at this precise moment. Yep. That ought to do it.
The only line of any interest was the last one before Sancho made a swift exit. “I don’t drink,” was his reply to an invitation to go out on the lash with his interlocutor, a moment that offered its own insight into why a classic English dressing-room vibe may not be Sancho’s ideal environment.
The most notable question came from Peter Schmeichel, also present on punditry duties, who asked about Sancho’s hopes of an England recall for the Euros. Sancho made the right kind of noises before wisely retreating into each-game-as-it-comes territory.
He was always going to be asked this. It is a question that pings off into all kinds of related hot-take issues. Sancho playing well is a stick with which to thrash Erik ten Hag. Sancho playing well is also an oblique line of attack on Gareth Southgate, who must at all times be linked with the idea of talent being wasted, as opposed to developed, supported and taken to the late stages of tournaments.
But it is also a terrible question, one that has no realistic connection to where England, Manchester United and most importantly Sancho himself are right now. It won’t happen. More to the point, it would be a dreadful idea all round.
Two things derailed Sancho’s progress. First, overblown expectation on the back of some sparkling performances. And second, throwing a rather gentle soul into the fug of rage and toxic engagement circulating around the England team.
It would be a bizarre response to the first signs of a recovery to suggest what he really needs right now is for both of these things to be repeated. How about we all just allow him to be good for a bit, to bloom in his own way, to remember how to be happy. Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel, then goes back two years later to do it all over again?
Declaring Sancho fixed would be illogical for other reasons. His performance against Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday was wonderfully sustained and incisive. He just kept on going forward, doing it in that beautifully bespoke way, all quick feet and creative angles. He looked lighter in every sense. This is all great to see. It is talent being expressed.
But it is also delicate progress. Sancho has three goals and one assist in 17 appearances for Dortmund. Do these numbers demand an England recall? Do England actually need him? The answer to both of these is no. Sancho is an exceptional talent. But one thing England do have is a superabundance of inside-forwards. Southgate has Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer playing on the right for their clubs. Anthony Gordon and Jarrod Bowen have goals, form and energy behind them. This is not a risk that needs to be taken.
Do Manchester United need him back? The obvious answer to this is yes – Sancho is a brilliant footballer; United lack these – but only under certain conditions. The reason Sancho looks so much happier at Dortmund is partly because he feels supported as the team’s attacking star. But also because he has such a clear and linear role, instructed to go forward every time, to be the way this team make space, creative freedom built into the structure.
Little wonder he struggled in the chaos at United, which is the opposite of this, a team trying to find a way to play, kitted out with a zombie squad of afterthoughts and outtakes. There is no sign of a Sancho-friendly structure being winched into place. This is a very specific kind of attacking player. Sometimes the fit will be right. Sometimes it won’t.
Sancho’s story is not a tragedy or a mystery. There is nothing unusual about a young footballer making a duff career move. Players and managers have always fallen out. The ballad of Jadon Sancho is more a story of how things are processed now, the peeled eyeball obsession with every detail of the sport, the obsession with cinematic young talent. The use of social media has made this falling-out more painful and less resolvable. Insane overspending has made a failing move an unavoidable big deal.
The one really correctable element is the ineptitude of United’s administration over that time: from manager churn to scattergun recruitment to the lack of guiding plan or a way to play. Sancho was never the cause of any of this. He is simply fodder for the meat grinder, a high-maintenance talent at a club that has exposed his weaknesses not his strengths.
In terms of moments, that horribly toxic Euros final at Wembley in July 2021 also had a profound effect on his trajectory. In a more fairytale-ish world Sancho could be back in another final on the same ground at the end of this season.
This ideal Sancho-world may also see Southgate taking over from Ten Hag at Manchester United later in the summer, an improbable outcome at this point, but about as likely as Sancho going to the Euros. For now, how about we all just let him play.
