by Never go back. Do not do it. Never, ever, ever go back. On the other hand, well, you could just go back. Especially when the whole leaving thing is going so wrong. Here’s a nice new way to mark the cold passage of time when the lights come on at four and the rain hits your window.
It’s been two and a half years since Jadon Sancho moved to Manchester United. United have had three managers in that time. Sancho has earned £40 million. And yet, he barely seems to have put on the shirt or gotten over his melancholy online ad clip. This schedule has simply stalled. Wait. Can we restart this?
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The news that Sancho will be loaned back to Borussia Dortmund as soon as a deal can be agreed should at least put an end to this strange and disturbing interlude. Not with any real resolution, though, but rather with a sense that something deeply strange has just happened, a failure that lies outside the usual rules of outrage and reckoning.
There is nothing new in this story, except perhaps its extreme. A talented footballer moves to the Massive Club and not only fails to make an impact, he doesn’t even exist on the same earthly plane. The contrast between style and result is striking in itself. At his best, Sancho is all grace, light and easy balance. In his Bundesliga reel there is a goal against Cologne in which the ball goes past him and he doesn’t even pretend to touch it, he just pretends to move three times, causing the defender in front of him to literally fall on his back for a steep balletic detour.
The best players can make the day end like this, make the game seem absurd. Why mark? Why corner flags? Why not do this instead? Sancho has that quality. But not in Manchester, where, instead, he seemed to be operating under the utmost gravity, a character from another film.
This is the real rarity. Most sports failures have a pattern. Here we have a story that should cry out for generic accusations, a clear assignment of blame and a thunderously censorious newspaper column. In reality, it feels shapeless and uncooperative, a flaw in the way things should work.
We still have to try, of course. Start the engines. Let’s rinse this thing. For the columnist it should be a classic case of Find The Villain. We have wasted money and talent. The standard approach is to treat this scenario like a crime scene, entering with a swing of the baton, pointing out the villain without the slightest hesitation, and from there machine-gunning that sorry specimen with 800 words of righteous justice.
Who do we have in the lineup? The most obvious villain is Sancho himself. There are some hot, thick notes to hit here. His shirt was too heavy. Sancho did not know how to recognize his own privilege, the precariousness of his talent. But of course, modern youth is irresponsible, fragile and too pampered. Plus, of course, we have the opportunity to lash out at the Bundesliga, to become brave, hoarse and tearful at the Arthurian magnificence of Manchester United, at the righteous authenticity of certain old things that I used to feel more comfortable with.
Sancho as a villain will be done. Works. But somehow he doesn’t feel quite right. In which case perhaps it would be better to move on to the other main line: Sancho as hero and victim, football as villain. This is another pre-prepared response, a way to demonstrate some more liberal sympathies, a progressive view of power dynamics, to get people to say “This” over a downward pointing X finger emoji.
There is merit in it. Here we have a sensitive young man exposed to the open reactor core. In reality, Sancho had never played a club game in England before his return. He arrived in the post-Covid hiatus of 2021, our summer of ass-cheek rocket launches, and he was shunted straight into the Solskjær-Rangnick-Ten-Hag non sequitur and told to save this thing.
He shouldn’t have complained about his manager on social media. She should have apologized, both for his own sake and because her weekly salary reflects such difficulties. But she also finds herself in an irrational place at a remarkably feverish time. The player as victim. Football as a killer. It will be done again. But it still doesn’t seem like enough.
There is the possibility of being more specific. How about Erik ten Hag as the villain? There is traction here. A bald, censorious man with the air of a rain-soaked 19th-century frontier preacher destroys young English talent. Maybe you’re one of those who come to Ten Hag pre-enraged because of a parasocial relationship with Cristiano Ronaldo, who still seems completely real and vivid even though he’s essentially a lit mass on a screen, a pair of cheekbones, a feeling of desire caught. Blame Erik. Get in. It works to a certain extent.
Additionally, we have the widest entry point in all of Manchester United as the villain. Welcome to the meat grinder, the vampire castle, a place that will collect your talented youth and leave them dry.
Compare the treatment given to Sancho at Dortmund, where Edin Terzic instructed his coaches to constantly follow him, to wrap their asset with care and detail. Manchester United as the main villain. Works. You can follow him and feel righteous, the arbiter of good and evil, of the saved and the drowned.
And yet, somehow this is not the whole truth either. Because at this point it is necessary to go back to the room, find the pocket derringer, and conclude that what we have here is a Murder on the Orient Express situation, a massive assignment of blame, a situation in which everyone gets out of this story. looking exhausted, compromised and wrapped in guilt.
Although in a way that feels reduced. The basic idea of what failure and success mean has dissolved slightly. Football can be a cruel place in its new guise as a 24-hour networked entertainment industry. Even the good guys in Dortmund are basically traders in human products. Sancho, 19, had played more games than Wayne Rooney at the same age. He suffered horrific and very public abuse after Euro 2020 (and hasn’t been the same player since).
What is the most difficult part of the elite level now? Succeed on the field? Or keep your chin above water? Sancho is still out there, a functional avatar in this world (there are literally hundreds of lovingly maintained Jadon Sancho social media pages – the brand is strong).
Maybe dodging occasionally happens a little more, a necessary step to keep a little piece of your soul intact. The only thing really missing here is the spectacle, moments of chiaroscuro under the lights where the rest disappears and the only thing that matters is the talent, the teams and the game. Forget guilt and failure, the classic scales of justice. The only real question here is whether Sancho can find that again.
