When he signed for the club in 1978, the late, great Gordon McQueen reckoned he had achieved the ambition of every professional footballer.
“Ninety-nine per cent of players will tell you they want to play for Manchester United,” he said as he put pen to paper. “And the rest are liars.”
Quite what the fearsome Scottish centre-back would have made of Jadon Sancho it is best not to speculate. The winger currently on loan from United at Chelsea has a very different understanding of what it means to represent the club. He believes what McQueen thought of as the pinnacle of their shared profession is actually akin to a prison sentence. When his former colleague Marcus Rashford posted a photograph on social media of him in action wearing an Aston Villa shirt on Sunday, Sancho responded with the single word “Freedom”.
As if stepping away from being paid around £300,000 a week to turn out for your boyhood club, thus fulfilling the dream of millions of supporters across the globe, is somehow the equivalent of liberation. And this, it should not be forgotten, from somebody who is still technically on the Old Trafford payroll.
Sancho has form on social media. When the previous United manager Erik ten Hag accused him at a press conference of dragging his feet at training, the player immediately took to the internet to decry him as a liar. The ensuing stand-off, as the player refused to apologise and the manager sent him to Borussia Dortmund on loan, lasted until the Dutchman was relieved of his duties.
His latest intervention, while clearly intended to be light-hearted, is about as tone deaf a remark as can be imagined. Actually it is simply ludicrous. Moreover, it speaks volumes for his attitude and the fractured nature of the dressing room.
To suggest playing for United, or indeed any top club, is akin to some sort of internment is indicative of the kind of self-absorbed, self-referential victimisation that would have been the subject of relentless mockery in McQueen’s day. Never mind the insult it delivers to the thousands of season ticket holders whose jobs involve processes somewhat less elevated than being paid tens of thousands of pounds a week for kicking a ball around. Maybe Ten Hag had a point after all: this is not the most professional of modern professionals.
‘Imprisoned’ by their vast contracts
On a recent edition of The Overlap podcast, Roy Keane asked to be excused from a panel discussion about Ten Hag’s successor Ruben Amorim claiming that Rashford was apparently not pulling his weight in training. Keane said he simply could not fathom how a highly paid footballer would slack in such circumstances. Putting in the hard yards, he believes, is a non-negotiable. That, after all, as he is fond of saying, is their job.
Sancho, however, seems to have another view. He appears to think the very idea of being required to deliver some sort of return for hefty remuneration as a woeful infringement of human rights.
Though maybe those of us in the stands who regard the lucky few turning out in our favoured club colours as the most fortunate folk alive have got it all wrong. Perhaps, as Sancho insists, really we should be feeling sorry for the poor chaps labouring around the Old Trafford pitch, dodging the mice, imprisoned by their vast contracts. They are, apparently, the ultimate victims of modern slavery. Who knew?
