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Pep Guardiola left puzzled by Jadon Sancho's decision to leave Manchester City for Borussia Dortmund
Pep Guardiola has accused Jadon Sancho of reneging on a verbal agreement to sign a professional contract with Manchester City, but admitted the England Under-17 winger will have more chance of playing first team football at Borussia Dortmund this season.
Sancho rejected an eye-watering £30,000 a week offer from City to join Dortmund last week in a projected £10 million deal, but Guardiola claimed the club could not have done more to try to keep one of their outstanding academy prospects.
Guardiola said he had “shaken hands” with Sancho on a deal that would have made him the club’s highest paid academy player only for the 17-year-old to tell him he wanted to leave City before the club’s pre-season tour of the US, which prompted the manager to omit the youngster from the travelling party.
As revealed by the Telegraph, Sancho reacted by failing to turn up for training for several weeks prior to his move to Dortmund, who have paid an initial £8 million for the player and agreed to City having a substantial sell-on clause.
It is understood that several agents were trying to muscle in on the deal, which complicated negotiations, something Guardiola appeared to hint at when he referenced how City had talks with the player’s “managers and the other managers”.
Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Red Bull Leipzig were among the overseas clubs that vied for Sancho’s signature, with City opposed to selling the teenager to Premier League rivals such as Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs, who had requested Sancho as part of the deal that took England right back Kyle Walker to City.
City have had a poor record of blooding young players in their first team since the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008 and Guardiola accepted that Sancho believes he has a better chance of playing at Dortmund. But he is adamant the club could not have made more of an effort to keep him and is disappointed the winger decided to leave.
“We did absolutely everything but I think it was not [about] the salary, maybe he thought he would get more minutes at Dortmund and I can understand that,” the City manager said.
“He visualized that he will play more than here. I don’t know what will happen. We will see because in the end [young players] have to show on the pitch their quality.
“But he has to know, the family has to know and especially the managers have to know we had a lot of confidence in him. We put a lot of confidence in him, like we did with [Phil] Foden and Brahim [Diaz] and other guys to help them to grow up from here. But at the end when they don’t want to stay, there is nothing to say.
“There are two sides to the decision and if one side doesn’t want it, it doesn’t want. We arrived at an agreement with Sancho, we shake our hands [on a deal], so we offered him a huge deal in terms of the salary. Even after when they say ‘No’, we met the father and the managers, and the other managers, and with him, but if the player says ‘No, no, no, no, no’, what can we do?”
Guardiola said he thought he had agreed a deal with Sancho and was then disappointed when the player said he wanted to leave and equally dismayed that he failed to show for training on so many occasions after being omitted from the US tour squad.
“We shake our hands and after that, before we went to the States, he decided, or the managers decided, ‘I am not going to sign the contract’,” Guardiola said.
“We said, ‘OK, you are not going to travel to the States because if you are not going to sign the contract, you are going to stay here’, and after that for the last two or three weeks he didn’t appear in the training sessions. He should come but he didn’t. I said, ‘Where are you?’
“All I can say is big luck to him because he has a huge talent, he will be good for the England teams but it’s the decision of the player. We tried absolutely everything to help them to play with us and he wanted to play in the first team.
“I said, ‘OK, you are going to train with us, if you win you are going to play or not, because in the high level it depends on your quality’ but in the end he moved on to Dortmund.
“We cannot control that. There were many teams interested in him because he is a huge talent. That is why we offered him the best contract possible to continue with us but he decided to move on and with that we cannot fight. I wish him all the best and hopefully we can play them in the Champions League.”
Guardiola was keen for Sancho to test himself against the best City had to offer and insisted he would never guarantee any player game time.
“I cannot assure even the best players we have, like Sergio [Aguero] and other ones, that they are going to play. I never did. I am not going to tell you, ‘I assure you, you will play all the games in the season’ [in order] to sign the contract. I would be a liar.
“You offer a guy who is 17 years old … you start the phase where you duel with Kyle Walker, with [Benjamin] Mendy, with [Vincent] Kompany and we will see what is your level, your dribbling, when you are going to play against all the full backs in the Premier League.
“That is what we believe is the next step, but he decided to move on, and the player does not want to stay.”