Jadon Sancho and the art of paying up

The Guardian

27-03-2025

Something that goes viral now and again is the particulars of the house sale of someone rich, famous and very possibly lacking in taste. Sure, that saloon bar created in the style of the East End pub off Goodnight Sweetheart felt like a good idea at the time, as did that mirrored master bedroom ceiling adorned in the style of Jeff Koons' Cicciolina period. How will it sell on the open market? Quartz and pine are very much out, and as for that kitchen island … how much are they going to have to lower the price to get shot? It's a doer-upper, surely.
Trends move on, and so, at great pace, does the football transfer market. One minute, a player's a hot prospect, and almost the next the dumper is beckoning. And as transfer fees climb ever upwards – £60m only buys you a 'maybe' these days – and wages multiply, there's an increased chance of expensive, unwanted duds.
Jadon Sancho didn't ask for Manchester United to pay £73m for him in 2021, though he probably benefited financially. That it didn't go well at United is now accepted, though failure can have as many fathers as success. He's hardly the only player to have been chewed up and spat out by the United bone machine. Morgan Schneiderlin, Memphis Depay, Alexis Sánchez, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Antony … the list of the lost is almost endless. Sancho was seen back then as English football's brightest talent, top of the class at the elite Borussia Dortmund kindergarten, even allowing for Erling Haaland banging them in. In fact, wasn't it because of Sancho that Haaland looked so bloody good?
Transfers, and the giddy expectation they allow, that mind's-eye fantasy of what a player will be like before the thudding reality of him actually playing, have made fools of just about every manager and sporting director in the game. In 2009, Real Madrid bought Cristiano Ronaldo, Xabi Alonso and Kaka, a full-on Oxford-Cambridge-Hull/Cleese-Milligan-Sessions trio. It's the thudding reality part that Sancho has struggled with, his contribution to United negligible, his loan return to Dortmund better but not as good as previously, and now Chelsea, where his impact has slowed to nothing-burger status.
Playing the margins of last summer's transfer market, Chelsea set up a loan deal leading to a permanent £20m-25m deal, handily paying only half-wages, but such is Sancho's lack of use they are reported to want to kibosh any deal. Problem being, United get £5m back as a penalty fee. Paying up to not play a player breaks fresh territory in transfer market silliness, even for Chelsea. As despite Sir Big Jim getting a bonus £5m into dwindling coffers, Manchester United still needs a buyer, preferably someone who fancies renovating a player still aged just 25. As for Sancho, he's reported to hope Dortmund's ever welcoming bosom stops him becoming yesterday's man.
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Send letters to [e-mail]. Today's letter o' the day winner is … Jacob Zelten, who gets a copy of Engulfed: how Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and the World. It's available in the Guardian Bookshop. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we have them, can be viewed here.
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