In the future, Jadon Sancho will be regarded as a seminal football player.
A young, English prospect who decided to play abroad rather than stay in the Premier League, Sancho leads the way.
Since Jadon Sancho left Manchester City for Borussia Dortmund in 2017, other young English players have followed his example.
The likes of Reiss Nelson, Emile Smith-Rowe, Chris Willock and Ademola Lookman have elected to join European clubs rather than languish in the talent-saturated English game.
What European clubs can offer these players is a guaranteed first-team place and a career progression plan.
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Jadon Sancho has benefited hugely from this, scoring 14 goals and making 16 assists in 2018/2019.
The 19 year old has started off this season in the same vein, with 2 goals and three assists in his opening three games.
As a result, Jadon Sancho will be in line for a move to a superclub sooner rather than later. At this point, he could pick any of the top Premier League teams, although perhaps only three could actually afford him. As well as that, the likes of Bayern, Juventus, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona will all be watching his progress.
The question at that point would be: should Sancho leave Dortmund? His path to stardom looks clear, but he wouldn’t be the first talented player to leave Dortmund and fade away.
The recent loan transfer of Henrikh Mkhitaryan from Arsenal to Roma illustrates this point. In perhaps the worst transfer swap in history, Mkhitaryan joined Arsenal in return for Alexis Sanchez after failing to establish himself at Old Trafford.
A player who looked electric while playing for Dortmund, Mkhitaryan looked hapless once he made a step up. He’s not the only one, either.
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Shinji Kagawa and Mario Goetze (world cup winning goalscorer, no less), have failed to kick on after dominating in Dortmund. Both players eventually moved back to Dortmund and began to rediscover their old form, although Kagawa moved to Real Zaragoza shortly after.
It appears that Dortmund is fertile ground for young players to thrive, but doesn’t necessarily prepare them to succeed elsewhere.
Time will tell if this will also be the case for Jadon Sancho. For now, though, the football world will watch his second season as a Bundesliga starter with interest. Currently, his Dortmund side are 3/1 to win the Bundesliga, while Sancho is the joint 5th favourite to win the Golden Boot at 50/1.
