Jadon Sancho & Anthony Elanga: the Man Utd overlap

Two very different roads to Old Trafford

Sancho arrived at Manchester United in the summer of 2021 as the headline signing, a £73 million statement of intent after four seasons at Borussia Dortmund had established him as one of the most exciting wingers in Europe. He had scored, assisted, and broken age records in the Bundesliga, won the DFB-Pokal as its top scorer, and gone to a European Championship final with England. Dortmund is where his legend was built, and Dortmund is where, a few years later, he would return.

Elanga's path could not have been more different. He joined United's academy at 12 years old after his family moved from Malmö to Greater Manchester, working his way up through the youth ranks, winning the Jimmy Murphy Young Player of the Year award, and making his senior debut via the substitutes' bench in 2021. He was a product of the club rather than an import to it, a boy from the academy sharing a corridor with a world-record teenage transfer.

The season itself

In 2022-23, both were part of the same Manchester United squad under Erik ten Hag. It was a campaign that delivered the club's first trophy in six years: the EFL Cup, beaten by neither Sancho's star status nor Elanga's academy roots but won together. United also reached that season's FA Cup final, losing to Manchester City. Elanga, notably, played in the EFL Cup semi-final second leg against Nottingham Forest, the club he would join that summer, while Sancho's season was disrupted by the injury and personal issues that would define his later time at Old Trafford.

Diverging again, fast

The overlap did not last. Elanga left for Nottingham Forest in July 2023 for a reported £15 million, and thrived there: a first Forest goal against Chelsea, a Premier League goal against his former club, a hat-trick of assists against Brighton, and enough consistent form to earn a £55 million move to Newcastle United in 2025. He has since become a full Sweden international, scoring at a World Cup.

Sancho's United career, meanwhile, unravelled. A public fallout with Ten Hag in September 2023 over training performances led to him being frozen out, and he returned to Dortmund on loan before loan spells at Chelsea, where he won the Conference League, and Aston Villa, where he won the Europa League. Remarkably, he reached three different European finals in three straight seasons with three different clubs, a feat no player had managed before. By the time his United contract expired in 2026, he was a free agent weighing up his next move, a far cry from the £73 million winger who arrived full of promise.

Why it still looks odd

Sancho's name is stitched to Dortmund's famous yellow wall; Elanga's now belongs to Forest's City Ground and Newcastle's St James' Park. Neither man's best football, by most accounts, came at Manchester United. But for one season they stood in the same dressing room, under the same manager, chasing the same trophies, a reminder that even clubs associated with failure can, briefly, bring together careers that otherwise never would have crossed.