It’s Jude Bellingham’s world and we’re just living in it. This is the truth of the new season, and this is the message that he semaphores with his now-familiar celebration pose: chest thrust out, arms levitating slowly into a “Y”, palms open.
It is a gesture which straddles perfectly the line between welcome and dominion, and one which has been seen five times within the first four games of his Real Madrid career. He stands before his adoring new fans like a young pharaoh before the pyramids: faintly awed by the immensity of what he has inspired, but in supreme command of all he surveys. On his back, he wears the No 5 shirt of Zinédine Zidane, and in his mastery and ease of stature, he already feels worthy of its inheritance.
At Real, Bellingham is standing on the shoulders of giants. But on his path there, he walked in the footprints of a man now called a wastrel. When Bellingham moved to Borussia Dortmund in 2020, with one Championship season under his belt, he followed Jadon Sancho, then established as one of Europe’s best young players. The season before, Sancho had scored 19 goals and assisted another 19 in the Bundesliga and Champions League.
Bellingham’s journey has in common with Erling Haaland’s the careful forethought of its plotting, and for those who guide it, as they weighed the overtures of Manchester United and Dortmund, the precedent of Sancho’s success was reassuring. It also worked the other way: without Sancho, who’s to say that Dortmund would have taken a punt on an English teenager without top-flight experience. You know that old domino-effect trope? Well, if the butterfly of the Manchester City academy doesn’t spread his wings, perhaps there’s no boy-king in a regal white shirt standing on the verge of superstardom.
Bellingham has gone from strength to strength at Dortmund and now Real Madrid
ZUMAPRESS/THE MEGA AGENCY
It is poignant to observe their respective situations now. While Bellingham sets a skybound course towards the Ballon d’Or, Sancho is mouldering in desuetude and mistrust. Last weekend, he was left out of United’s squad to face Arsenal, then accused Erik ten Hag of scapegoating him.
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Though there have been glimmers of excellence, Sancho’s time at Old Trafford can only be seen as a huge disappointment. When he left Dortmund, after three seasons as a first-teamer, only Lionel Messi and Thomas Müller in Europe’s top leagues had more than his 41 assists over that span. In two and a bit Premier League seasons, he has mustered six assists, plus nine goals. That total of 15 is in arrears of Patson Daka and Douglas Luiz; less than half the tally of Harvey Barnes or Bryan Mbeumo. Sancho is still only 23 and in theory has time on his side. But twilight falls early in the valley of the lost boys.
What happened? Football-wise, I think Sancho’s downfall is an unintended consequence of his success. Even in his pomp, he was an unusual elite winger. At Dortmund, Sancho was tackled attempting a take-on about 2.5 times a game: a very high figure ranking him in the bottom five per cent of all wingers and attacking midfielders in Europe. His percentage of successful take-ons — basically, how often he got past his defender — was decent in the Bundesliga, but dropped much lower against superior opponents in the Champions League. In two of his three Champions League campaigns with Dortmund, Sancho didn’t create a single chance from dribbles.
Sancho was dropped by Ten Hag as the United manager was unhappy with his performances in training
MATTHEW ASHTON/GETTY IMAGES
● Henry Winter: Time for Sancho to stop moaning and win over Ten Hag
Beating his man, fast-twitch sleight in tight spaces: that was never his forte. Instead, he thrived on rhythm, combination play and the intuition of space. At Dortmund, his numbers for passes made and received — about 50 and 60 respectively per 90 minutes — were in the 98th or 99th percentile for wingers, and similarly high in the Champions League. He was constantly exchanging and interacting in a team of well-grooved dynamics: Raphaël Guerreiro overlapping him, Marco Reus and Bellingham making box runs in the half-spaces, Haaland tearing beyond the last line in transition.
Sancho’s misfortune was not simply to join a dysfunctional club, but that his godly numbers convinced that club they were getting a plug-in superstar. He was never that player. It’s interesting to compare him to Marcus Rashford, a different type of winger who has ridden out his own slump and whose resurgence throws an unforgiving light on Sancho’s shortcomings.
Sancho was considered to be one of the most talented young players in the world at Dortmund
MARTIN ROSE/GETTY IMAGES
In the first Covid months, Sancho and Rashford each performed an act of social activism. Sancho revealed an undershirt with the message “Justice for George Floyd”, while Rashford began his campaign to ensure free school meals for children in food poverty. Both stands were laudable, but looking back they also happened to distil the fundamental difference which separates the two players: one at their most comfortable embedded within a movement; one with the ability to make a movement happen by himself, to create something out of nothing.
There have also been whispers of a lack of seriousness, of the absence of the steely rigour on which top players whet the blade of their talent. Even during his salad days at Dortmund, Sancho was fined more than once for arriving late for training. One of Gareth Southgate’s strengths as England manager has been to judge shrewdly that inner quality somewhere between constancy, resilience and drive; seeing it and backing it in Rashford and John Stones, finding it wanting in Jesse Lingard and Dele Alli. His implicit verdict on Sancho — whom he has not called up for nearly two years, though he started England’s Euro 2020 quarter-final against Ukraine — feels significant.
But it’s not that simple. Just as Lingard and Alli were dealing with hidden anguish, it also seems possible that there is some human pain, some unseen weight, behind Sancho’s malaise. He missed three months of last season, addressing what Ten Hag intimated was not merely a physical issue, but one of mental wellbeing (a disclosure which, according to the Daily Mail’s Sami Mokbel, did not have Sancho’s consent).
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It is also notable that the dividing line of his career, the point after which he wasn’t the same player he had been before, coincides with summer 2021, when he not only moved clubs but also missed a penalty in the Euros final and was deluged with racial abuse.
Sancho was among those to miss a penalty for England in the Euro 2020 final
REUTERS/LAURENCE GRIFFITHS
It happens that most of the players who have endured this inhumanity — Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Raheem Sterling, Vinícius Junior — have somehow managed not to let it break their stride. But it would be neither surprising nor worthy of anything other than empathy if Sancho was more deeply affected. Athletes don’t often speak freely about the impact of receiving racial abuse on social media, but a window on its effect was opened by the American tennis player Sloane Stephens. “This type of hate is so exhausting and never-ending,” she wrote. “It really freaking sucks.”
I hope Sancho finds the support he needs and makes it back to the levels he once occupied. There is a tempting reflex, in the case of failing players, to say they were never that good, that they were overrated. That isn’t true of him. For now, rather than dwelling on the shadow cast by his struggles, I prefer to remember that the player who looks like England’s next icon stepped into his light.
