Just a few match days into the 2019/20 Bundesliga, Jadon Sancho has announced his intentions to the world – he wants to become the best.
In just two years of his joining Dortmund from Manchester City for £8m, the teenager has seen his value rise to over £90m, becoming one of the Bundesliga’s top players who is being backed to go on to even bigger things.
At 19, Sancho became the youngest Bundesliga player to ever reach 15 career league goals. In his debut season (2017/18), he scored one league goal from 12 matches, broke through the ranks in 2018/19 as he scored 12 goals and provided 14 assists, topping the assists chart in the league and has followed that up with a strong start to the current season, having already scored two and assisted three in just three league games thus far.
This meteoric rise for the teenager’s career has seen him being scouted by the biggest clubs around and despite his signing another contract recently, the allure of clubs like Manchester United and Manchester City may be hard to pass up on.
Lucien Favre’s tactics of building attacks patiently and breaking the defensive lines on a counter-attack seem to suit Sancho’s style. His combination of great off-the-ball-movement and an expert ball control help the team a lot in breaking down teams positionally. When he is not on the ball, he drifts excellently wide to pull players away from the defence, and cuts back in to receive the ball, which ends up with a shot or a cut-back which his teammates finish.
He’s also a delight to watch as he possesses tricks which he regularly pulls off during play. He looks a fragile player and he knows this, using it to his advantage very well. Then he runs at the defenders at bursts out some neat skills and produces something special. He makes things look easy down the right side of the field.
He is an extremely technical and creative player which makes it easy for him to be able to pull all that stuff off. His tactical attribute rating betrays his positional discipline though, but it is due to his inability to actively join Dortmund’s pressing and I’m sure Favre doesn’t mind because he brings a whole lot to the team.
His training and development are important to him at this stage of his career, and he has shown this by penning another deal to stay a bit longer with Dortmund and Favre just a year after penning an initial agreement.
Favre’s system is the best fit for his talents, however, there’s the fear of the stereotype surrounding English players eventually catching up to him, as most of the bright young talents that have been produced by that country have faded out before their careers really kicked off.
He has the privilege of being in a much quieter league, as well as being under a very disciplined and old-school coach, so we can expect great things from him in the future.
PREDICTION: He will keep up his numbers from last season and still top the assists charts and he will unlock new levels to his game which will be exciting to see.
