Pep Guardiola claims Jadon Sancho turned his back on Manchester City after agreeing a contract to become the club’s highest paid Academy graduate.
The England starlet signed for Borussia Dortmund in a £8m deal on transfer deadline day after Guardiola’s failed attempts to convince the 17-year-old and his family that he should at the Etihad.
Sancho was touted by many as City’s best ever Academy graduate and was offered assurances by the highest hierarchy at the club that his first team progress would not be blocked by any star signings.
Opening up on the series of events that led to his move to Dortmund, City’s manager revealed: “We arrived at an agreement with Sancho, we shake our hands.
“We offered him a huge deal in terms of the salary – he would have been well-paid in all of the academy, and we shake our hands.
“We believed the next step was to train every single day like with (Phil) Foden and Sancho would have trained every single day with us.
“He decided – or the managers decided – I am not going to sign the contract. We said ‘okay you are not going to travel to the States (on pre-season) because if you are not going to sign the contract, you are you are going to stay here.’
“After that the last two or three weeks, he didn’t appear in the training sessions.
“We tried absolutely everything to help them to play with us and he wanted to play in the first team,
“There were many teams interested in him because he is a huge player, a huge talent that is why we offered him the best contract possible to continue with us. But he decided to move on and with that, we cannot fight.”
The England junior international was tracked by many clubs and was highly linked with a move to Arsenal as was believed to be homesick and needed to go back to London.
However, he joined up with Borussia Dortmund where was he handed the number 7 shirt formerly worn by Ousmane Dembele.
His departure is a major blow to City, who have faced repeated criticism for their failure to promote youth in recent years.
Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has made it clear he wants a pathway from the club’s state of the art academy to the first team, with Sancho one of the players he personally earmarked to make the breakthrough.
Guardiola is adamant he was prepared to take a chance on the teenager.
He added: “I cannot assure even the best players we have like Sergio and other ones that you are going to play.
“I am not going to tell you I assure you, you will play all the games in the season to sign the contract, I would be a liar it is not true.
“When you offer a guy who is 17 years old, you start the phase where you duel with Kyle Walker, with Benjamin Mendy, with Vincent Kompany, we will see how is your level.
“It’s disappointing because he is academy he has been here since a long time ago, we have tried to build him up and say maybe in one or two years he might play the wingers.
“Maybe he thought he would get more minutes at Dortmund and I can understand that. He visualized that he will play more than here.
“I don’t know what will happen. We will see because, in the end, they have to show on the pitch their quality because they have to know, he has to know, the family has to know and especially the managers have to know we had a lot of confidence in him. We put a lot of confidence in him.”
