The Athletic: Manchester United Only Have Themselves to Blame For Losing out on Sancho

The transfer window is closed and all is right with the world. After speculation all summer that Jadon Sancho would be making a move from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester United, the move never went through. So what happened? Well, a great new report from The Athletic shows just how badly Man United dropped the ball here.

According to the report, the deal comes down to Man U not believing Dortmund would hold true to their deadline of August 10th. After that date, BVB Sporting Director Michael Zorc would no longer accept the €120 million price tag they had for Sancho. Watzke had reportedly even called Man U at the start of the summer to explain the price and when the deal had to be done. After this date it seems talks were all for naught. Once Zorc made his statement about Sancho staying put, a panicked “United director made a call to check whether the statement was genuine. The response was along the lines of, ‘What did you expect? You knew the terms.’”

The report also indicates that United thought they could maybe make a huge offer over the asking price after the deadline, along the lines of Neymar or Dembele’s super deals, but there was never serious offers from Woodward & Co. After the deadline, according to the report “All proposals were said to have been relayed to Dortmund via the agents knowing, full well they would be turned down.”

The report even indicates that while Sancho may have really wanted to go to Man United, he even began to feel “undervalued” by United due to their weak offers.

There is a lot more in the article but mostly about how broken Man U’s front office is and the splits between the Glazer, Woodward and Ole. Overall, this reporting lets us draw one conclusion as BVB fans; Zorc would have 100% sold Sancho this summer, but only on his terms, and Manchester United screwed it up due to their own incompetence.