Jadon Sancho faces an uncertain future at Chelsea or Manchester United but he is not the only young English wonderkid who has failed to live up to the hype.
Having a transfer-obsessed club contemplate paying £5million to not sign you is perhaps the most obvious sign in footballing history that your career is not going the way you want it to.
But that is exactly the reality facing Jadon Sancho as his current club Chelsea debate giving Manchester United that fee to get out of an obligatory purchase.
But Sancho is not the only England youngster to fall through the cracks and fail to live up their much-hyped potential. Here are five others from the past who went from wonderkid to forgotten men.
Jack WilshereFebruary 16, 2011. Barcelona at their peak of their powers arrive at the Emirates Stadium.
Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Villa and of course Lionel Messi. The Catalan team that day is a who’s who of footballing royalty. Piles and piles of trophies between them, moments that will be remembered for lifetimes and each with their own place in the sport’s history.
And yet on that night, in a cold London evening, it was not Messi or Xavi or Iniesta who took the headlines; it was 19-year-old Jack Wilshere.
Wilshere’s performance in that game may well fit into the ‘rose-tinted spectacles’ view of how we see football but the young Englishman was genuinely incredible that day. A mix of the typical English, hard-tackling midfielder combined with a flair that would not look out of place on the fields of La Masia saw him outperform Barcelona’s famous midfield trio.
He at one stage slide-tackled Pedro before doing a mini-Cruyff turn to get away from Iniesta and then picked out Robin van Persie. Glorious stuff
It is hard to remember another game when a player went from young prospect to the hope of a nation so quickly.
Wilshere was billed as England’s answer to the tiki-taka style sweeping over football and yet, 13 years on, the 33-year-old is not dazzling at the Camp Nou, the Bernabeu or even the Emirates. He is a coach at Norwich City.
Injuries, the bane of so many footballers, not only disrupted Wilshere’s career but outright ruined it. In 10 seasons of first team football, he missed 323 games through injury.
He slipped away from Arsenal in 2016 when he joined Bournemouth on loan but an initial run of good form fell away and he moved to West Ham in 2018. Wilshere would never play more than eight league matches in a season for the Hammers before he returned to Bournemouth in 2020.
One final move came in 2021 when he moved to Danish side Aarhus but 14 games later and he hung up his boots for good, aged just 30.
DeleThe most famous footballer ever to come out of Milton Keynes (it’s not a long list), Dele broke into the Tottenham team under Mauricio Pochettino in 2015 and became back-to-back winner of the PFA Young Player of the Year award.
His flick and volley against Crystal Palace typified that he could do just about anything with the ball and back then, it seemed impossible he would go anywhere but the top.
But if Wilshere’s problems were mostly with injuries, Dele’s were a mix of things that combined to see him lose his way. Problems with mental health, the departure of father figure Pochettino and stop-start runs in the team meant that while Harry Kane continued up the football pyramid, Dele left Spurs to join Everton in 2022.
Even at Goodison, Dele failed to reignite his career, making just 11 appearances, including only one start before playing just two games in the 2022-23 season.
He left England and went to Besiktas on loan but struggled to adapt, leading head coach Senol Gunes to state the former wonderkid was “below expectations in terms of efficiency”.
A hip injury in April saw him return to Everton before his contract expired in June 2024.
After six months without a club, Cesc Fabregas’ Como decided to sign the player but his debut could hardly have gone worse – he received a red card just 10 minutes into his substitute appearance, despite Kyle Walker’s protests.
Dele stated his goal was to play in the 2026 World Cup but that looks increasingly unlikely with every passing day.
Michael JohnsonOnce dubbed the “next big star for England” by Sven Goran Eriksson, Michael Johnson came through the ranks of Manchester City before breaking into the first team in 2006.
A star of City’s academy, much was hoped for the midfielder who Eriksson believed played like Michael Ballack but despite starting strongly, frequent injuries prevented Johnson from kicking on.
He made 23 league appearances for the club in the 2007-08 campaign but following the Abu Dhabi takeover, Johnson was relegated to the bench and appeared just three times.
He would remain at the Ethiad until 2011, meaning he was training with the likes of David Silva and Vincent Kompany, when he moved to Leicester City on loan for the final seven games of his career.
Having failed to rediscover his form and still struggling with injuries, Johnson retired and instead became an estate agent.
He would later tell the Manchester Evening News that football lost its joy for him.
“I was injured quite a lot. That didn’t help,” he said. “It’s well known that you can get those natural endorphins by playing and exercising, but, especially after I had surgery on my knee, I wasn’t getting that release either.
“I thought it was going to give me all this confidence, being a footballer. It should have done. I had put all my worth on achieving in football. But it sort of had the opposite effect on me. I was thinking, ‘Why the hell do I feel like this?’ And it’s not just that I wasn’t feeling better about myself. I was feeling worse than before. Suddenly, I didn’t have that hope of getting better.”
Lee SharpeIn a parallel universe, it is Lee Sharpe that tops Manchester United’s appearance list, not Ryan Giggs.
The winger joined United in 1988 at the age of just 17 and following Jesper Olsen’s departure, a permanent spot on the wing opened up for the youngster.
Sharpe would appear 22 times for Sir Alex Ferguson’s United but he fell into the trap of everything that comes with being a footballer.
Part of a drinking group that included Roy Keane, Giggs and Gary Pallister, Sharpe has made a lucrative career of giving after-dinner speeches of just what happened during those years but when Ferguson told the players to knuckle down or fail, only one of them chose the latter option.
He played 265 times for United, so was by no means a complete failure, but there was always the thought that he could achieve so much more.
Falling down the football league, Sharpe would play for six different clubs after leaving Old Trafford but retired in 2004. Giggs, meanwhile, played until 2014.
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Ravel Morrison
“The most naturally gifted young player I’d ever seen.”
These were the words Rio Ferdinand used to describe Manchester United youngster Ravel Morrison.
The Manchester-born midfielder rose through United’s ranks, gaining a reputation as one of the most promising youth talents the club had ever produced but if Morriosn was as talented as Ferdinand claimed, he is living proof that ability is not everything.
Morrison went from future England and Manchester United star to being let go on a free in June 2012 as he failed to reach the level demanded of Fergie.
He joined West Ham with Ferguson telling Sam Allardyce the player needed “to get away from Manchester and start a new life”, but things in London were hardly any easier.
West Ham loaned him to Birmingham to get more experience and he had some success upon his return to London, scoring the Hammers’ goal of the season against Tottenham.
But trouble and legal issues followed Morrison. In 2021, he received a 12-month referral order and was ordered to pay £1,445 in compensation after admitting two counts of witness intimidation.
An assault charge against him was dropped after his girlfriend refused to testify and he was convicted of criminal damage after he threw her phone out of the window.
He posted homophobic tweets and was charged with common assault on an ex-girlfriend and her mother. He was later cleared.
In November 2023, he purchased a disabled parking permit to be able to park in Manchester city centre.
All of these off-field issues only helped to increase his decline on it. He was part of the England setup at junior level but declared for Jamaica in 2020, last playing for them in 2023.
Morrison now plays for Dubai-based club Precision Football.
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