Chelsea saw an opportunity in Jadon Sancho – if he hits heights again it will be well worth risk (2024)

Jadon Sancho is a boyhood Chelsea fan born in the south London district of Camberwell, where he formed an early friendship with fellow local football prodigy Tammy Abraham. Calling Stamford Bridge his professional home has always been an appealing notion. Now it is reality, just not in the manner that anyone would have predicted.

When he joined Manchester United from Borussia Dortmund in a deal worth £73million (€85million) three years ago, Sancho was the most coveted young player in the transfer market. Now he has been traded as a distressed asset, his huge talent devalued by performances that have not lived up to a gargantuan contract and an irreparable public fallout with Erik ten Hag.

But where United saw only an expensive problem to be excised from their squad, Chelsea — who have spent the final week of this summer transfer window dealing with several similar issues of their own — saw an opportunity. The parallels between acquiring Sancho on an initial loan with an obligation to buy and the £44.5million ($58m) deal that brought Joao Felix back to Stamford Bridge from Atletico Madrid this month are too numerous to ignore.

Both are dynamic, often dazzling attacking technicians who would have been well beyond the financial reach of Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly if their seemingly destined journeys to global stardom had gone to plan.

Instead, they have accepted significant pay cuts — in Sancho’s case, Chelsea are covering a proportion of his United wages this season and he is on board with agreeing a more incentivised contract with a lower base salary next summer — to take their chances at an ambitious club willing to bet that, as they enter what should be the prime years of their careers, they can find their way back onto that sharp upward trajectory.

There is one big difference. Joao Felix has spent most of his first six seasons as a first-team footballer searching without success for the most consistently impactful application of his skills, but Chelsea have a crystal clear idea of what a maximised version of Sancho looks like based on the exceptional peak of his body of work at Dortmund.

Sancho’s rare combination of ball mastery, passing vision, intelligent movement and cool finishing made him a prolific scorer and creator in the Bundesliga, racking up an incredible 37 goals and 41 assists in 92 league appearances over three seasons before his 21st birthday.

The majority of those goal contributions were delivered from the right side, but he also had devastatingly effective spells on the left. This is the flank he actually prefers (though remarkably United were surprised to learn this when they signed him) and the side on which he appears to have an easier path to regular game time at Chelsea.

United’s lack of a clear plan for how best to use Sancho went beyond not knowing his preferred position. There was the ill-conceived decision to bring a faded Cristiano Ronaldo back to Old Trafford. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s preference for a fast and furious transitional approach also jarred with some of the England international’s best technical qualities.

Dortmund’s rationale for bringing the exiled Sancho back on loan in January 2024 was that he could help a struggling team built around counter-attacking become more capable of breaking down opponents with controlled possession. That was not entirely borne out but, despite taking time to gain match sharpness and rhythm after months on the sidelines, the 24-year-old proved a helpful contributor to a surprise run to last season’s Champions League final.

Chelsea’s possession-focused, positional style under new head coach Enzo Maresca looks a cleaner fit for Sancho, but the football considerations are only one part of the equation.

As reported by The Athletic’s Laurie Whitwell, oversleeping and timekeeping were persistent issues even during his best stretches at Dortmund, even before he exhausted the patience of Ten Hag at United. Will the scarring experience of the last three years at Old Trafford, coupled with the promise of a fresh start back in his home city of London, be enough to prompt a change of mindset?

Just as importantly, can Chelsea — a club defined by a disorienting level of player and coaching churn under Clearlake and Boehly — provide the kind of structured environment he needs?

Sancho will at least be in familiar hands. Maresca, a fellow Manchester City alumnus, made it clear this week that he has closely tracked Sancho’s career. No one in football knows him and those around him better than Chelsea’s co-director of recruitment and talent Joe Shields, who brought him to City from Watford in 2015 when he was their UK southern academy scouting manager.

There should be no shortage of motivation on the player’s side. Sancho has signalled a willingness to make a significant financial sacrifice to escape a bad situation at United and secure a chance to kickstart his career. Chelsea have an obligation to buy him as part of this deal providing certain triggers are met, but Maresca is not obliged to pick him if he is not performing as desired.

In isolation, effectively swapping out Raheem Sterling — a marquee signing that Clearlake and Boehly have spent much of the last two years regretting — for the much younger Sancho is a very worthy high-upside swing, even if it is not without risk. If he signs permanently at Stamford Bridge and disappoints, finding another club willing to take him on will not be easy.

The larger and more immediate concern is whether adding Sancho to a squad that already boasts Cole Palmer, Christopher Nkunku, Noni Madueke, Joao Felix, Pedro Neto and Mykhailo Mudryk actually addresses any of Chelsea’s weaknesses. Does it enhance an extravagance of creative attacking talent that may yield diminishing returns on the pitch?

Maresca’s chances of delivering success at Stamford Bridge this season might have been more significantly improved by signing another proven No 9 to compete with Nicolas Jackson, or a specialist defensive midfielder to provide more balance to an area of the pitch in which Chelsea have much more technical quality than tenacity.

But if Sancho can get close to rediscovering the form that saw him tear through Bundesliga defences in a Dortmund shirt, Chelsea’s reclamation project will be worthwhile.

(Photo: Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)

Liam is a Staff Writer for The Athletic, covering Chelsea. He previously worked for Goal covering the Premier League before becoming the Chelsea correspondent for ESPN in 2015, witnessing the unravelling of Jose Mourinho, the rise and fall of Antonio Conte, the brilliance of Eden Hazard and the madness of Diego Costa. He has also contributed to The Independent and ITV Sport. Follow Liam on Twitter @liam_twomey