On one hand, it appears that things are now escalating quickly when it comes to Manchester United acquiring Jadon Sancho from Borussia Dortmund, as talks are now in advanced stages. On the other hand, it may still be a few days yet until the 20-year-old is signed, sealed and delivered.
This is United after all, where big time transfers have been extremely tedious and needlessly protracted lately (see Harry Maguire and Bruno Fernandes). According to The Guardian, United will pay a record fee of £90 million, and “the deal is expected to tie the English winger to the club until 2025.”
Manchester United in advanced talks with Borussia Dortmund over £90m Jadon Sancho – a new record fee for an English player @FabrizioRomano #mufc https://t.co/YsxllhtRo7
— Ed Aarons (@ed_aarons) August 3, 2020
That £90m is just the start by the way, as add-ons are set to propel the final sale price further north. According to the Independent, the final amount will be closer to £120m, with the outlet reporting that Sancho believes he’ll be a United player “by the end of the week.”
The sooner this gets done the better, with United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer reportedly wanting this transfer over the line ASAP. Given how long and drawn out this transfer saga has been already, most people paying attention to this are on the same page as the Norwegian.
August 10 seems to be a soft deadline here, as that’s the date Borussia Dortmund commence training camp for the new season, and they would like to have their 2020/21 team in place by that point.
Of course, if negotiations happen to take longer than that, so be it. Old Trafford is obviously not hurting money right now, and it appears they’ll have an even bigger budget to work with as they’re set to get the Alexis Sanchez deadwood off their books now too.
It appears that a Sancho acquisition will make him the most expensive transfer purchase by an English team, ever. United hold the current record, with the £89m #Pogback deal in 2016. It was also world record breaking at the time, but today the Paul Pogba re-acquisition “only” ranks as the sixth most expensive transfer of all time.
United also own the mark for the second (Harry Maguire- £89m, 2019) and third (Romelu Lukaku- £75m, 2017) most expensive transfers in British history. Maguire and Lukaku are the 13th and 14th most expensive players, respectively, in world history.
United also broke the British transfer fee record when they signed Angel Di Maria from Real Madrid for £59.7m.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
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