Borussia Dortmund handed Jadon Sancho the lucrative number 10 shirt on the Manchester United player’s return to the club.
On Thursday, the Bundesliga giants announced they had signed Sancho until the end of the season after a nightmare at Old Trafford. The 23-year-old never settled in the Northwest and his disorders came to a head in early September.
After the defeat to Arsenal, Erik ten Hag asked why Sancho was not in the squad that day. The Dutch coach responded by stating that the striker’s functionality in training had been sub-normal, which led to his dismissal.
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Taking issue with the United manager, Sancho posted on social media how he felt he had been made a ‘scapegoat’ at the club. The post was subsequently deleted but the damage was already done after the winger failed to apologise to his boss.
As expected, a return agreement with Dortmund has been shown and trust has been placed in Sancho to bear the weight of the number 10 shirt. A task that had not been entrusted to the Englishman when he arrived at the Théâtre des Rêves.
During his time with Dortmund’s first team, Sancho won the number 7 shirt thanks to his outstanding performances. However, his arrival at United came a month before he signed Cristiano Ronaldo.
Therefore, Sancho was asked to decide on another number, 25, which would be his own. The conceivable importance of this selection may simply be due to the fact that the sum of the numbers two and five gives seven, but all other primary characteristics have been discarded.
Anthony Martial had the number 9, Marcus Rashford had the number 10 and the number 11 was recently taken by Rasmus Hojlund. Sancho is an older member of the locker room. By putting Sancho back at number 10, it seems to recommend that Dortmund have big plans to center their team around the winger, at least for the rest of this season.