Jurgen Klopp admits he wanted to sign Jadon Sancho – and explains why he wasn't able to
Jurgen Klopp has admitted that he considered signing Jadon Sancho from Manchester City before he moved to Borussia Dortmund, only to be scuppered by the culture of English clubs not selling to domestic rivals.
Klopp, whose Liverpool team face Bayern Munich at Anfield in the first leg of the Champions League last-16, had been asked about the current condition of German football when he made the revelation.
“Buying English players is a smart idea because we would never have a chance to get Sancho,” he said. “We are not blind – we saw him, we liked him and then we think, 'Can we get him?' No. Because English clubs don't sell to other English clubs. I don't know exactly what the reason is for that but they don't do it. Now, they can go to Germany which is a wonderful league.”
Last week, Dortmund’s technical director Michael Zorc claimed that the quality of young English players now exceeds those being nurtured in Germany.
While with time Klopp’s interest in Sancho might come to be viewed as one of those great transfers that never happened, perhaps what he says about the unwillingness to trade – particularly between top clubs – offers more insight into a developing trend, layering more detail on why there appears to be a backlog of talent at academies.
When Sancho left City for Dortmund, Liverpool signed Mohamed Salah and Dominic Solanke in the same summer. This, in many ways, is the interesting part: considering Salah plays in a similar position, would Sancho have earned the opportunities at Liverpool that he’s since had at Dortmund, considering Salah’s ascendancy as one of the world’s great players?
Perhaps more can be gleaned about the possibilities that lay in wait for Sancho at Liverpool by the path of Dominic Solanke, who signed for Liverpool from Chelsea – but only once his contract at Stamford Bridge had elapsed.
Solanke played 27 times for Liverpool in an attacking role last season, scoring only once, and he could not say he did not have the chance to become a regular at Anfield. This explains why Klopp was willing to accept an offer of nearly £20million from Bournemouth last month for his services.
For any young player to move from one of the biggest English clubs to another, it does seem that risks need to be taken in terms of personal development. When Solanke told Chelsea that he wanted to move away and the Londoners found out his destination was Liverpool, he was removed from the first team picture.
The same thing happened to Bobby Duncan, Steven Gerrard’s cousin who signed for Liverpool last summer, a full 12 months after he told City he was leaving because he thought there was more of a chance for him to reach the first team at Liverpool, the club he supported.
In effect, Duncan sacrificed a season of his young career to secure the move he wanted. Having played well for City’s under-18 team – having become the first Englishman ever to score a hat-trick against Brazil, as he did as an under-16 in 2016 – he found himself out of the picture at City, where he did not play at any level during the 2017/18 campaign.
Seventeen-year-old Duncan has since been a regular in Liverpool’s under-23’s and has trained with the first team at Melwood.
