Man utd paid around £880,000 for each Sancho appearance

Manchester United has decided not to activate the one-year extension clause in Sancho's £250,000-a-week contract. Five years after the club spent £73 million to sign him, the player will now leave as a free agent. The Mail reports that, calculated this way, Manchester United paid approximately £880,000 for each of his appearances.

Manchester United issued a brief statement regarding Sancho: "Sancho joined Old Trafford in 2021 and won the 2023 Carabao Cup with the team. The winger made a total of 83 appearances for the team, after which he was successively loaned back to Borussia Dortmund, then loaned to Chelsea and Aston Villa."

In 2021, when Manchester United brought Sancho in from Borussia Dortmund for a substantial fee, expectations were high, but his career at the Red Devils steadily declined.

This summer, the club could have exercised the one-year extension option on his £250,000-a-week contract to find a buyer and recoup some costs, but ultimately Manchester United chose to cut their losses.

In fact, even though the official announcement was only made today, Sancho had long been drifting apart from Manchester United.

It has now been confirmed that the 26-year-old Sancho will leave Manchester United as a free agent this summer. His last appearance for the team dates back to the 2024 FA Community Shield, which was one of his 83 games for the Red Devils.

Calculated this way, Manchester United paid approximately £880,000 for each of his appearances. In Ten Hag's first season, Sancho played 41 games, after which his relationship with the Dutch manager steadily deteriorated.

In December 2022, Sancho temporarily left the first team due to poor physical and mental condition, and he never fully regained his match fitness and rhythm after returning.

The situation further worsened. Early in the following season, Ten Hag publicly questioned Sancho's training attitude in a press conference.

Sancho later responded on social media, accusing the manager of consistently making him a "scapegoat." After this incident, he was ostracized from the team, and during his time at Carrington, he had to train and eat separately from the first team.

From then on, Sancho completely lost his footing at Manchester United. For the second half of the 2023-24 season, he was loaned back to Borussia Dortmund; for the entire 2024-25 season, he was on loan at Chelsea.

Initially, Chelsea's loan deal included a compulsory purchase clause of up to £25 million, but after the season, the Blues chose to pay a £5 million termination fee, sending Sancho back to Manchester United.

Last season, Sancho was loaned to Aston Villa and won the Europa League with them. Manchester United had previously attempted to sell him multiple times without success, so they had planned to renew his contract and continue looking for transfer opportunities, but ultimately abandoned this idea.

Despite Sancho's decent loan spell at Villa, Manchester United decided to part ways with him, completely shedding the high salary. INEOS Group has been committed to reducing the team's wage bill, and Casemiro, Rashford, and Sancho are among the highest-paid players at the club in recent years, with all three moving to other teams next season.

Manchester United has offered a new contract to young goalkeeper Dermot Mee, and professional contracts to academy players Albert Mills and Dante Plunkett.

However, 18-year-old center-back Godwill Kukonki did not receive a professional contract offer from the club.