How close did Chelsea and Liverpool come to signing Jadon Sancho?
FT Desk
- 11 Mar 2022 02:30 CST
- 6 min read
Jadon Sancho is undoubtedly one of the few players that seems to be thriving at Manchester United at the moment.
The Old Trafford side have truly struggled under interim manager Ralf Rangnick, with a number of star players like Harry Maguire and Cristiano Ronaldo simply failing to live up to the billing.
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However, fortunately for the German tactician, he has been able to rely upon former Borussia Dortmund star Sancho since the turn of the year.
But according to the player, he very nearly didn’t become a Man Utd player at all last season and could have ended up at Chelsea or Liverpool.
What has Sancho said?
According to Sancho, the player’s desire to make the move to Man Utd was largely based on the friendships he made with players at the club while on international duty, who in turn continued to convince him into moving to the club.
"I'd met Jesse Lingard, Marcus Rashford, Harry Maguire and Luke Shaw with the national team. They always said: Come to United," said Sancho in an interview with Sky Sports. However, Sancho also revealed that they weren’t the only players acting on behalf of their employers.
He added: "There were also the guys from Chelsea or Liverpool who all tried to convince me of their club. But it only got really serious after the European Championships.”
Did Chelsea or Liverpool try to sign Sancho?
So did Chelsea or Liverpool make a serious attempt to snatch Sancho before Man Utd finally signed the player last summer?
It’s impossible to confirm either way, but when we look at each club’s transfer activity over the past two years we can get some kind of impression and read between the lines.
For example, while Chelsea didn’t sign a winger prior to this transfer window, they did sign no less than three wide forwards in the form of Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Hakim Ziyech in 2021 - which was when Man Utd began to seriously ramp up their attempts to buy Sancho.
Similarly, Liverpool spent the best part of €50 million signings Diogo Jota from Wolves last summer and have since bought another wide forward in the form of Luis Diaz in the previous window.
So while we can’t say for certain whether Sancho’s claims are true, there’s no denying that both Chelsea and Liverpool were shopping around for wingers and wide forwards as Man Utd were trying to tie Sancho down to a move to Old Trafford.
