How do you restore the confidence of a player who still has the potential to become one of the world’s best?
Borussia Dortmund backed themselves to find the right answers when they re-signed Jadon Sancho on a short-term loan from Manchester United in January.
The 23-year-old England forward had fallen out with United manager Erik ten Hag after angrily responding on social media early in the season to comments the Dutchman made to reporters about a perceived lack of effort in training. When no public apology was forthcoming, Sancho was banished from the first-team squad, then sent out on loan to the German club United had signed him from.
Manchester City academy graduate Sancho enjoyed the most productive period of his career at Dortmund, from 2017 to 2021. Could a familiar environment reignite his spark, and even help him launch a late bid to be included in England’s squad for the European Championship, also in Germany, this summer?
He recorded two assists in his first two games back but they were against Cologne and Darmstadt, who are both fighting to avoid relegation, and he struggled to make an impact in the next six matches. Dortmund themselves are not the team who came so close to winning the title last season, and are 20 points behind leaders Bayer Leverkusen in fourth place with nine matches to go.
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Sancho is a player low on confidence in an underperforming team and expectations need to be adjusted accordingly.
Indeed, for the first half an hour of an eventual 2-1 away win against Werder Bremen on Saturday evening, Sancho cut a frustrated figure on the left wing. He gave the ball away multiple times and on one of those occasions Bremen forward Marvin Ducksch nearly scored.
But in the 39th minute, Sancho reminded everybody of his quality.
Dortmund were on the counter-attack and he had to stretch to receive Julian Brandt’s pass, which was slightly behind him.
Sancho rolled the ball with his right foot, snapped it back onto his left and darted past Julian Malatini into the penalty area, then tricked goalkeeper Michael Zetterer as he snuck a shot through a gap at the front post to double Dortmund’s lead.
A brief moment of brilliance or a promising sign of things to come?
— Borussia Dortmund (@BVB) March 9, 2024
“In the last few days and weeks, I’ve gotten many, many questions about why he isn’t where he was yet,” Dortmund head coach Edin Terzic said of Sancho after the Bremen win. “For us, it makes complete sense if you take into account what his last 12 months looked like, and yet last week he was very dissatisfied and there was a long conversation.”
Long conversations have not been plentiful of late for a player forced to train with United’s under-18s squad and prohibited from using any of the senior team’s facilities at the club’s Carrington training ground — including the canteen, which meant his meals were delivered to him in a lunchbox.
The message from Terzic was one of encouragement. Scoring for the first time since May will surely help Sancho feel like he is on the right track.
There were other glimpses of his talent on display against Bremen, too. Sancho started on the left wing in a 4-2-3-1 formation and regularly switched positions with central playmaker Brandt. Despite being bought by United for £73million ($93.8m at the current exchange rate) ostensibly as a right-winger and being predominantly right-footed, it is from the left where he has enjoyed his most recent success.
On Saturday, he drove forward with the ball and played clever passes, even if there were moments which showed he is still not completely back up to speed, having not played first-team football since half an hour as a substitute in August’s 3-2 Premier League home victory against Nottingham Forest before rejoining Dortmund.
In the 10th minute, he lost possession on the edge of his own penalty area and Niklas Sule had to intervene to prevent Ducksch getting a shot away. Captain Emre Can put his arms around the London-born winger, while full-back Ian Maatsen gave him words of encouragement.
Later in the half, Sancho threw his hands up in frustration after attempting a sharp one-two with Maatsen — the Chelsea loanee misread his intentions and Dortmund lost possession.
(Carmen Jaspersen/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Terzic showed his faith in Sancho when his former United team-mate Marcel Sabitzer was sent off in first-half added time by taking off right-winger Donyell Malen instead, bringing on Mats Hummels for defensive reinforcements.
The 10-man visitors switched to a 5-3-1 formation with Sancho operating as a left-sided central midfielder. The new priority was to provide support for Maatsen as Bremen gained control of possession. Sancho worked hard off the ball and provided an outlet on the counter before being replaced in the 73rd minute, just over the home side had made it 2-1.
“After the game, he was dissatisfied because he said lost the ball too many times, especially in the second half, and that’s what I like about him,” Terzic said. “He is not just focusing on his goal but taking in the entire performance. Even though he hadn’t scored in the last few weeks, we’ve seen that he’s well on his way there. We know he’s not 100 per cent yet but we’ll get him there.”
Dortmund’s squad were serenaded by their travelling supporters at full time and Sancho watched on as his team-mates celebrated by jumping into each other.
When everybody else headed towards the tunnel, he lingered for a few extra seconds to applaud the fans.
Before Jude Bellingham became Dortmund’s prized jewel, Sancho drove the team and entertained the crowd, having left Manchester City’s academy to move to Germany when he was only 17. He only made seven league starts in his debut season but was part of the England squad that won the Under-17 World Cup in the October.
He established himself in the starting XI in 2018-19, playing in all 34 league games and scoring 12 goals — including becoming an instant hero to the supporters with the away winner in the derby against Schalke.
“He was unbelievable,” Adrian, a Dortmund supporter originally from Yorkshire who now works in Germany, tells The Athletic outside Bremen’s stadium as he recalls those days. “He played in a different way to the rest of the team. He just attacked and ran at defenders. He was like a breath of fresh air.
“In the years after he left, we also lost Bellingham (to Real Madrid) and (Erling) Haaland (to City), but everyone still talks about Sancho as the player they miss the most. Every time he got the ball, we thought he was going to score.”
Sancho with Dortmund team-mates this month (Hendrik Deckers/Borussia Dortmund via Getty Images)
In four seasons with Dortmund, Sancho scored 50 goals and provided 64 assists in 137 appearances, while also helping England make the final of the European Championship in 2021.
“I thought he was going to be great,” Adrian says. “But maybe the pressure (at Manchester United) was too much. I remember after seven games he didn’t have any goals or assists, and there were loads of ‘007’ jokes. It felt extreme because players don’t normally get people on their back that quickly.”
Sancho’s debut season with United was disrupted by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s November dismissal and then Ralf Rangnick was in charge on an interim basis before Ten Hag arrived from Ajax the following summer. He scored his most recent goal for United against Fulham in the final game of last season and had made only three substitute appearances in this one before his clash with Ten Hag.
After Sancho’s loan to Dortmund was confirmed, Ten Hag told UK broadcaster Sky Sports, “we have had issues all the way through, and so you can make out his stay at Manchester United so far is not a success”.”
There were questions over his timekeeping and application in training on occasion at United but Hans-Joachim Watzke, Dortmund’s chief executive, was emphatic in his support when Sancho rejoined them.
“Jadon doesn’t have a discipline problem at all,” he said. “Jadon only has one problem: he’s late from time to time. His internal clock is not so well developed. He’s a very nice boy, but every now and then, he’s late. But you have to accept that.
“What do you go to the stadium for? We don’t go there because everyone is always on time. I care about how he plays with the ball.”
Sancho’s United contract expires in the summer of 2026, but includes the option of a further year. What happens next is largely dependent on Ten Hag’s own future at Old Trafford now that new co-owners INEOS are taking over football operations. In the meantime, Gareth Southgate names an England squad on Thursday for Wembley friendlies against Brazil a week on Saturday and Belgium three days later, with the European Championship now less than 100 days away.
“I would love to sign him (permanently) again,” says Jonathan, a Dortmund supporter for nearly three decades. “He has been well received since he came back. He started well but has been in and out of the team with a few niggles since. He has a good relationship with (midfielder, Dortmund icon and ex-captain, and 2017-21 team-mate Marco) Reus and sometimes a club is just right for a player.”
(Top photo: Oliver Hardt/Getty Images)
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