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German legend Lothar Matthäus has blamed Borussia Dortmund’s woes and poor performances on three players in particular, including Manchester United loanee Jadon Sancho.
Sancho re-joined Dortmund on loan last month.
The Englishman elected to complete a temporary switch to the Bundesliga in an effort to escape his troubles at United.
Sancho was embroiled in a bitter public spat with Erik ten Hag which resulted in the player being banned from the first team and training with the senior squad.
He has had a mixed start to life in Germany since going back. He was very good and showed promising signs during his early games at the Signal Iduna Park.
However, in Dortmund’s last two matches, Sancho has been below-par. He came on late against Freiburg and missed three big chances, including a sitter that looked destined to go into the back of the net.
During Dortmund’s most recent clash vs. Wolfsburg on Saturday, the United loanee had an uneventful game and was not able to make an impact.
He featured for 80 minutes in a central role right next to Niclas Fullkrug as Edin Terzic deployed a 4-2-2-2 formation to start proceedings.
Sancho alternated between the central positions and drifting out to his favoured left-hand side.
In a Sky90 football debate (relayed by Ruhr 24), Lothar Matthäus took a swipe at some of the Dortmund players but especially Sancho, Marco Reus and Mats Hummels.
Matthäus bemoaned the media hype around Sancho and explained that he can’t be relied upon to solely pull Dortmund out of their current predicament.
The former European champion and a World Cup-winning captain said, “Sancho can’t be the saviour for me. This has been exaggerated again by the media.”
“He hasn’t played for a year. That’s too cheap for me.”
“I’m bringing in a player who played really well three years ago, but hasn’t had any match practice in the last two or three years.”
Matthäus added, “Can I expect a player like that to turn around the thing that was done wrong in the preliminary round?”
Dortmund are set to return to action on Tuesday night when they take on PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League. Sancho will undoubtedly be keen to put up a much better performance.
