London is Blue Dispatch #061

On a brisk April evening, the Yellow Wall’s roar rouses 80,000 inside the Westfalendstadion, hoping to ruffle the feathers in PSG’s sleek wings. Kylian Mbappe, heir to one of the seats in football’s new pantheon, Ousmane Dembele, a golden snitch reincarnated as a winger and the long-limbed future world-beater in Bradley Barcola – a truly formidable attacking triumvirate.

And yet when the whistle kicked off proceedings, a different name slowly found its way to a thousand lips, as Jadon Sancho single-handedly dulled PSG’s radiant glow like a total eclipse. On the right flank, his opponent was Nuno Mendes, once rated the best left-back prospect in the world, before injury cast aspersions on that claim. Mendes was quicker, faster and tougher than the Englishman, and yet he spent the night tasting dew and wind, clawing at Sancho’s slipstream, like a puppet whose strings were extensions of Sancho’s laces.

Mendes was dribbled past six times on the night, the most in his senior career, and perhaps the most by any player in a Champions League semi-final game. On the post-match show on CBS, Thierry Henry was stunned. He brought up a stat – in 48 games at Manchester United Sancho had tried 7 dribbles in a single game only once. He was quite certain Sancho attempted seven alone in the first half. The producer quickly prompted Henry through a message via his earpiece - seven attempted in the first 10 minutes. Sancho finished the game with 18 attempted dribbles, completing 13. Both were the highest tallies he’d managed in his senior career.

There are numerous compilations on YouTube of Sancho tying Mendes into a sailor’s knot over 90 minutes. Watch it back and you see the spellbinding effects of the dormant magic – the nonchalant elegance exuding with every feint, oozing total assurance in every deception – the two jabs before the elusive uppercut smashes the chin.

In the mortal realm we call this magic confidence, and Sancho cultivated it to the fine line that separates it from arrogance. The seeds were planted in the claustrophobic confines of 5v5 cage matches. It was nurtured and took root through his academy career. Watford’s Head of Academy during Sancho’s stint there, Shane McGuane, told the BBC that Sancho intentionally positioned himself next to the opposition’s best defenders because “he never wanted an easy ride. He was challenging himself.” His U15 coach at Watford Louis Lancaster backed this up, saying that he often organized uneven training games (10v6, 9v7) and Sancho always wanted to be on the side with fewer players. On his youth debut for City, he started at CF and scored 5 in an 8-3 rout.

It was that confidence that summoned the will to defy an emperor. At 17, he refused to go on a preseason tour with Man City, believing he was ready to start for the first team. "You start the phase where you duel with Kyle Walker, with [Benjamin] Mendy, with [Vincent] Kompany," said Pep. “Then we will see what is your level, your dribbling, when you are going to play against all the fullbacks in the Premier League. That is what we believe is the next step.” He rebuffed a lucrative deal from City that summer and moved to Dortmund. He started 7 times in his first season as Die Schwarzgelben’s first English player; by 21 he had managed 38 goals and 45 assists in the league, a resounding testament to his self-belief.

It was during his time in the other side of Manchester that the magic waned. Even Bruno Fernandes’ astounding numbers took a severe nose-dive after being forced to play in the colossal yet fading twilight shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo, and Sancho discovered it affected him too. Rashford’s wildly fluctuating fortunes on the left & a Mudryk-esque situation after overpaying for Antony saw Sancho floating in limbo, ultimately falling out with Ten Hag.

At its absolute nadir, Ten Hag, who publicly accused Sancho of being unprofessional in training, went on to declare that the English winger was out of the side because of mental health issues, without seeking Sancho’s consent to discuss it publicly. At one point United’s HR feared that Sancho had legal ground to sue the club for how it had treated him. For two seasons, United was Sancho’s Azkaban - happiness sucked out of him in slow, debilitating gulps. Letting him go on parole to Dortmund felt like the best step for everyone.

Football is seldom ever a place for fairytales however. A strong performance in the quarters against Atletico Madrid and the PSG masterclass helped Dortmund reach the Champions League final, but the inevitable juggernaut that is Real Madrid snatched away a dream. 2 goals and 2 assists in 14 league games is a drought compared to his best numbers. His shooting has fallen off a cliff – in 947 minutes he only took 9 shots, at 0.86 per 90. At his best, he was at a respectable 2.23.

But the numbers that matter may just be trending in his favour. In his last full season at United, in 27 starts there were only 2 where he managed more than 50 touches (7.4%.) In 18 starts at Dortmund, he managed 9 (50%.) This statistic is far more important than it seems; Sancho’s four best games for Dortmund are also the four games in which he managed the most touches. The relationship seems simple enough - the more you trust him with the ball, the better he gets.

After two years spent inside an unfamiliar cage, the six months at Dortmund must have felt a different kind of disorienting. What he pulled off against PSG was a reminder that was believed dead and buried is yet alive and breathing. Whether that trauma is beyond repair is something no one knows, but Chelsea seem to believe can be healed.

Stamford Bridge these days is no easy place to play in, even for those wearing blue. Players look like they’ve been asked to tap dance on a minefield. Sancho will find that he isn’t the only one trying to awaken their inert magic. The path he has chosen will be anything but easy.

At the Bridge, however, he will share common purpose with another sleeping giant – one aching to dispel the rancid haze of mediocrity, to prove to many that it has not lost what once made it unstoppable. In this, Chelsea will need Jadon as much as Jadon needs them.