Jadon Sancho is Becoming To Pep Guardiola What Kevin De Bruyne Is To Jose Mourinho

The presence of Kevin de Bruyne as one of the Premier League’s very best has for years been used a stick with which to beat Jose Mourinho. Long maligned for his perceived lack of faith in youth, the Belgian midfielder went on to expose the folly of this attitude, leaving Chelsea having barely been given an opportunity to prove himself.

Now, Pep Guardiola faces the prospect of being confronted by one of his own mistakes in the same way. Not so long ago, Jadon Sancho was on Manchester City’s books as one of the club’s brightest young players. Frustrated by the lack of path into the first team, the winger made the move to Borussia Dortmund where he has since flourished into something of a superstar.

It seems likely that Sancho will return to the Premier League this summer, with Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United all lining up to pay a transfer fee close to £100 million to capture the player viewed as England’s best since the emergence of Wayne Rooney. City and Guardiola will be made to rue the past error of their ways.

Somewhat ironically, the reigning Premier League champions could use a player like Sancho at this moment. Leroy Sane is widely expected to leave the Etihad Stadium sooner rather than later, with Bayern Munich holding a long-standing interest in the winger, and so there will be a place in the City squad to fill.

That Sancho saw no way into the City first team as a youngster is damning enough. The Abu Dhabi-owned club has spent a great deal on its academy facilities over the past decade, moving into the state-of-the-art City Football Academy adjacent to the Etihad Stadium itself. City’s young players don’t exactly go wanting for much.

This £200 million complex, which opened in 2014, was meant to represent Man City’s commitment to youth. “We are building a structure for the future not just a team of all-stars,” reads a quote from Sheikh Mansour on the wall of the City Football Academy reception area, underlining the statement made by such a hefty physical investment.

So far, though, a disconnect between the first team and the youth academy has undermined everything Man City have built. Phil Foden is the only graduate to have been given a genuine opportunity to prove himself in the senior squad and even then there has been debate over the game time Guardiola has afforded the teenage midfielder.

City’s investment in its youth academy and associated facilities will mean nothing if what they produce is forced to leave the club to move into the senior game. It was a similar sort of ideological fragmentation that forced De Bruyne to leave Chelsea and the Blues have been made to rue that ever since, with the Belgian now ironically the main man at Man City.

If the case of De Bruyne doesn’t hammer home the point to City, then the sight of Sancho setting the Premier League alight for a rival team next season surely will. Sancho should have been at the vanguard of the club’s homegrown next generation, but instead he is the embodiment of how, to date, Man City’s commitment to youth has been superficial.