Chelsea are paying a £5million penalty so that Jadon Sancho will not play for them again. Unfortunate as it is for the Manchester United loanee being returned to sender, that is the headline which will be remembered above all, even if there is more to this peculiar parting than that.
Chelsea’s agreement with United did not include any loan fee, the switch having been hurried over the line on last summer’s deadline day when a deal sheet was submitted to the Premier League to give the clubs an additional two hours to complete the transfer after the 11pm cut-off.
Whereas the Blues received £5m from Aston Villa so they could borrow Axel Disasi for the second half of the season, and a similar sum from Juventus for Renato Veiga, Sancho was a comparative freebie who came with a £25m obligation to buy — and, as revealed by Mail Sport in March, a £5m break clause in case they wished to back out.
Chelsea considered whether Sancho was worth signing permanently after he scored in last week’s Conference League final win over Real Betis and they decided he was.
Sure, he had not shown his greatest football, save for the odd game in which he looked like the generational talent we saw once upon a time at Borussia Dortmund, such as the 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace in January when his innovation created Cole Palmer’s opener.
But he had been a popular addition to the changing room. He had helped Chelsea finish fourth in the Premier League to get back into the Champions League while completing their European trophy collection by winning the Conference League.
Chelsea are paying a £5million penalty so that Jadon Sancho will not play for them again
Sancho joined the Blues on loan last summer in a deal that came with a £25m obligation to buy
Chelsea wanted to sign the winger after he helped them to qualify for the Champions League and also win the Europa Conference League, but personal terms proved to be an issue
He was still only 25 and had never shown why Erik ten Hag had such issues with his training standards at United, with Joe Shields, Chelsea’s recruitment chief who worked with him at Manchester City, vouching for his character before they committed to bring him in on loan.
Chelsea sources say they made a genuine attempt last week to make his signing permanent, but explain that it was in discussions over personal terms that any prospect of a deal died, leading to this unusual £5m divorce which the Blues are treating as a retrospective loan fee.
It is understood Chelsea agreed to cover around half of Sancho’s £250,000-a-week wages with United last season, but insiders say they were not prepared to pay the full salary moving forward.
There is a wage structure at Stamford Bridge nowadays based on incentive-based deals rather than catering to superstars and they also learned that Sancho, who still has a year to run on his United deal, has other options across Europe.
He will now be free to explore those because the Blues are set to let him skip their Club World Cup campaign in the United States in less than two weeks, even if he is contracted to them until the end of June.
Returning to United, even if only temporarily, is an unavoidably awkward situation for Sancho, especially after he angered the club’s supporters in February with a one-word comment on social media.
‘Freedom,’ he wrote on Marcus Rashford’s Instagram after his former team-mate had made his Villa debut on loan from United.
Sancho pressed send on that post amid a risible run in which he went 780 minutes across 14 games without a shot on target for Chelsea, between Boxing Day at home to Fulham and March 13 against Copenhagen.
It is understood that there were issues about Sancho fitting into Chelsea’s new wage structure
Sancho now faces an awkward return to Man United, where he was exiled under Erik ten Hag
During his time at Stamford Bridge, there were no issues with his standards in training
Blues boss Enzo Maresca spent much of the second half of the season calling on Sancho to deliver more from the left wing, with his struggles prompting fans to pin the blame on the Italian’s tactics.
Before he even arrived at Chelsea from United, Maresca had explained over the phone to Sancho that his system requires wingers who can beat their full backs in one-v-ones.
We saw that on his very first appearance at Bournemouth in September, when he came on at half-time and changed the complexion of a match which was not going the visitors’ way. He set up Christopher Nkunku to secure a 1-0 win and by full-time there was only one name being sung on repeat by the away supporters, and it was Sancho’s.
But as the season continued, rarely did he resemble the player they had hoped he would be, with fans growing frustrated when he was stunting attacks rather than starting them and avoiding shooting when he had the chance to do so, which some put down to dwindling confidence.
Chelsea are grateful for the contribution Sancho made in his season with them, but football moves on fast.
They are now accelerating their interest in other wingers, such as Borussia Dortmund’s Jamie Gittens, the 20-year-old Englishman who is available for around £50m — twice the fee Sancho would have cost if terms could have been agreed.
Chelsea was supposed to be a glorious homecoming for Sancho, as close as he had been to his old SE11 postcode since leaving to pursue his professional career.
Born in Camberwell and brought up in Kennington, it brought him back to the capital where he was once a cage footballer with big dreams. He said he felt at home, too, describing the club as ‘one big family’ to him.
But now he is on his way back to Manchester at a cost of £5m to Chelsea.
