What makes Jadon Sancho so good?

Jadon Sancho has exploded onto the scene with Borussia Dortmund, and this season became the first player in any of Europe’s five major leagues to hit double figures for both goals and assists, but what is it that makes him so effective?

London-born, Watford- and Manchester City-raised but most definitely Dortmund-bred, Sancho swapped the English Premier League for the Signal Iduna Park in the summer of 2017 with first-team opportunities at a premium.

Two-and-a-half short seasons later and Sancho is a world-class winger with 27 goals and 33 assists in 69 Bundesliga games to his name, who has also collected a DFL Supercup and 11 England caps.

Dortmund are one of the best clubs in the world for young players – Erling Haaland and Achraf Hakimi have also been lighting up the European game despite still being eligible for U21 football – but Sancho is arguably the furthest along in his progress.

Dribbling and close control

Perhaps the most striking facet of Sancho’s play, and the one most likely to lift fans off their seats, is Sancho’s silky ball control.

Born to Trinidadian parents in Camberwell, South London, Sancho grew up good friends with Reiss Nelson, the Arsenal winger who spent the 2018/19 season on loan with Hoffenheim. The pair honed their skills on the streets, competing and spurring one another onto greater heights. By the time the Southwark London Youth Games came along in 2011, having them both on the same team was borderline unfair.

“When I saw Jadon and Reiss I thought ‘these boys are mad,'” Sayce Holmes-Lewis, a former coach and teacher, explained to the Daily Mail. “Jadon was just making people look stupid. The nutmegs, the skills. Some were outrageous. And it was other academy players they were doing this against.”

Fast forward a few years – although not many – and Sancho’s outrageous ball control was on full display in Dortmund’s 4-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen on Matchday 31 of the 2017/18 campaign. At this point Sancho was just one assist into his Bundesliga career, but he opened the scoring for BVB against Bayer before laying on two more.

The first assist, for Maximilian Philipp, needs to be seen to be believed. It wasn’t just that Sancho had the wherewithal to find his attacking teammate; Sancho pulled the ball out of the sky with the outside of his foot and carried on at full pace, making the eventual pass to a goal possible at all.

Pace to burn

There is many a mercurial talent who uses their trickery to get past an opponent because they might not win a footrace with their marker. The great No.10s of yore like Zinedine Zidane or Juan Roman Riquelme had that extra yard in their head, and even today, Philippe Coutinho would rather dip his shoulder and feint his way past a defender than simply outrun him.

But Sancho is quite unique in that he also boasts the sheer athleticism to go with his incredible technique and imagination. Barcelona legend Xavi recently said that his former club lacked wide players like Sancho and fellow Bundesliga stalwart Serge Gnabry. The pair, as well as RB Leipzig’s Christopher Nkunku, perhaps look best placed to steal the show from Robbery – the departed Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery – as the Bundesliga’s top wingers, but Sancho is the quickest of them.

Gnabry and Nkunku have maxed out at 20.6 miles per hour this season, whereas as Sancho has clocked 21.5mph at top speed. Returning to that DFL Supercup triumph, his searing pace can be seen at full tilt. Sancho scored the second of Dortmund’s two goals in their 2-0 win over Bayern in the 2019 showpiece, leaving one David Alaba in his wake.

Decision-making and vision

So, the S on Sancho’s pyjamas could stand for skill or speed, but Super-Sancho knows exactly when to lean on which of the above strengths.

It has already proved to be the right decision to swap Manchester City for Dortmund: former academy teammate Phil Foden has made 32 Premier League appearances with Pep Guardiola’s side in the time that Sancho has made 69 in the Bundesliga, and the now-20-year-old has kept making the right choices since.

Kids in the playground might try and beat their man twice, showing off years before developing a more mature head for the game, but Sancho only does it to open up space in the opposition defence. More than once the Englishman has found himself the furthest Dortmund player forward. His ability to skin his marker more than once simply gives teammates time to break into the box.

Sancho’s number of assists this season drill home the point. Thomas Müller is the only player in the league to have laid on more goals (16 to Sancho’s 15), but six of the Bayern man’s assists have been for Robert Lewandowski, and he has teed up seven different players.

Lewandowski and Müller have played alongside each other for six seasons now, and although the Raumdeuter is a special player, it helps his assist numbers that the game’s pre-eminent striker has played alongside him for so long.

Sancho has assisted 11 different players this season – Paco Alcacer, Marco Reus, Thorgan Hazard, Nico Schulz, Julian Brandt, Haaland, Raphael Guerreiro, Axel Witsel, Mats Hummels and Dan-Axel Zagadou – and his tally would be yet higher if more of his nine further big chances created had been finished off.

He can take as well as make

The other assisters in the league simply do not score at the same rate as Sancho either. Müller has six goals to his name. Nkunku, Hakimi and Hazard – the other players to have laid on double digit goals – have scored four, three and five respectively. Sancho has scored 14. Only Lewandowski (25) and Leipzig’s Timo Werner (21) have more, and they’re centre-forwards, even if the latter has moved deeper and wider as the season has progressed.

“I want to score, that’s one of my main things, to score,” Sancho told bundesliga.com, as if he needed another string to his bow. “I’m just working for the team and that’s what I want.”

It certainly works. Sancho needs just 3.3 shots per goal. He shoots early to catch the opposition goalkeeper off-guard, but if the shot isn’t on, he’d rather start again, trick, assist, dribble, create space, wait for the next chance.

Only Haaland and Borussia Mönchengladbach captain Lars Stindl have required less shots per goal this season, but they are both central strikers. They have also featured for eight and 26 games respectively this term, the former only having joined Dortmund from Red Bull Salzburg in January, the latter having had to overcome a broken shin.

Sancho starts out wide and has had 23 games for his percentages to dip, but they simply haven’t.

Adaptability and dedication

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the breadth of his talent, Sancho is able to operate across the final third. Able to go left or right past a defender and then score or assist with equal efficiency, it barely matters what side Sancho starts on.

Sancho’s grandmother sadly passed away ahead of Dortmund’s Revierderby clash with Schalke in December 2018. The youngster, then 18, was offered the weekend off, but flew back from London on the Friday and scored the decisive goal in a 2-1 win on the Saturday.

“The goal means everything to my family,” Sancho said at the time. “Sadly, my grandmother passed away, so that goal was for her. I’m glad that I got the goal and helped the team to get three points.”

If she’s still watching the game from above, Ms. Sancho will now be looking down on a generational talent. With his combination of skill, trickery, game intelligence, goal-threat and will-power, Sancho has already begun to prove that he is in a league of his own.