It is tempting to wonder if Jadon Sancho considers the fate of his two immediate successors. Borussia Dortmund tend to have one big summer sale, an annual scramble among the elite to take the prized asset from football’s premier finishing school. In 2023, Jude Bellingham was the deluxe departure, in 2022 Erling Haaland, in 2021 Sancho himself. Bellingham and Haaland can be bracketed together in a trio again: along with Kylian Mbappe, they may be the finest players on the planet.
Sancho? He has spent four months training with Manchester United’s Under-18s, eating packed lunches as he has been exiled from the canteen at Carrington. An imminent return to Dortmund on loan is the best-case scenario to try and salvage his season; perhaps his career. Haaland and Bellingham have reached new heights since leaving Signal Iduna Park: for Sancho, a 2019-20 Bundesliga season that yielded 17 goals and 16 assists looked similarly auspicious but remains an ever more distant peak. It nevertheless showed a level of potential and production that Antony has never emulated.
