Jadon Sancho made his first appearance for Manchester United since October against Nottingham Forest in the Carabao Cup, with Erik ten Hag intelligently coy about his absence
There was a time when the current sponsorship of what was founded as the League Cup in 1960 represented how the competition had become, to put it mildly, a fringe event.
For starters, we had no idea what or who Carabao was, and then there were the draws. One occurred in Beijing, another in Ho Chi Minh City, and yet another in a Morrisons in Colindale, northwest London.
An inquiry about staging the 2017-18 final four draw on the International Space Station – 400km above the earth and orbiting the globe in the time it takes to play one leg of those semi-finals – was politely declined.
The cup was not treated with respect, and then Manchester City won it; that’s how it worked for a while.
Nobody is dismissing it anymore, and the competition is about to witness one of its most compelling finals when Newcastle United and Manchester United meet on the last Sunday of this month.
If you can put aside your disdain for the club having to sell its soul to the Saudis to get to this point, being at St James’ Park for their progression to their first Wembley final in 24 years was an absolute thrill.
However, one of the most significant moments of the Carabao Cup semi-final second legs occurred in the 63rd minute of Manchester United’s completion of formalities at Old Trafford against Nottingham Forest.
Jadon Sancho returned to work with a smile after being absent for more than three months. Erik ten Hag did not go into great detail about the reasons for Sancho’s absence from the first-team squad, but he did explain that the player’s problems were both physical and mental and that the two were intertwined.
Ten Hag has handled the Sancho situation with class and consideration, as he has done with most challenges during his brief tenure as United manager. He has been truthful without exposing the player to undue scrutiny, and he has been firm but fair to the player himself.
Since he was earmarked for stardom when playing alongside Phil Foden in Manchester City’s youth team, Sancho has been lauded AND vilified.
That, you may say, goes with the territory of being a high-profile footballer, for an elite club and for a country. Deal with it. Enjoy your millions and deal with it. But we are all wired differently.
Who knows the long-term extent of the hurt caused by the racist abuse suffered by Sancho after he had missed that penalty in the Euro 2020 final?
Who knows how he mentally coped with being held up as a prime, expensive example of what was going wrong at Old Trafford? All the money and adulation in the world cannot buy you permanent peace of mind.
Ten Hag clearly saw beyond a drawn-out drop in form; he saw beyond the price tag, the wages, and the way of life.
And, of course, Ten Hag has an obvious vested interest because a Sancho at his best would be a valuable asset to any team in the world.
We do not know the extent of Sancho’s mental struggles – as if you can ever put some sort of sliding scale on mental struggles – but know that Ten Hag identified an issue and, between them, the manager and the player are dealing with it.
“Footballers are not robots,” Ten Hag said when first explaining Sancho was going away for some help. And he is right … which was why Sancho’s smile was one of THE moments of the competition that surprised us all.
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