Leroy Sanes future at Bayern is uncertain but a City return is fanciful

Leroy Sane is 27 now. It would be wrong to say he is approaching the winter of his career, but the summer certainly seems a long time ago.

Sane was magical in the 2017-18 season, when he was named PFA Young Player of the Year for his vibrant role in Manchester City’s first Premier League title under Pep Guardiola — a manager he still loves.

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He did everything people want from a winger: he scored goals, got assists and just looked the part as he wriggled out of tight spots and dribbled past two or three players for fun.

The last five years have been much less eye-catching and when he returns to the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday night anything could happen.

He could win the match for Bayern with a piece of brilliance or he could struggle to make an impact and be substituted. It is not inconceivable that he is not in the starting line-up at all.

To recap the last five years, Sane injured knee ligaments playing for City in the Community Shield just as a big-money move to Munich was being put in place. He eventually moved in July 2020 but he suffered, to some extent, from an ongoing war between then-manager Hansi Flick and sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic.

In fact, Sane’s arrival was one of the causes of the rift: Salihamidzic wanted Sane but Flick preferred Timo Werner. After Salihamidzic got his way, Flick often criticised the new guy’s work rate and rarely gave him a full game, and when he did it was often on the right wing.

Last season, under Julian Nagelsmann, he had his best period — albeit after being booed in Bayern’s 3-2 win over 1.FC Koln. The Bayern manager’s big idea, pushing up left-back Alphonso Davies to the winger position in possession, freed up Sane to move inside as a left-sided No 10. That autumn, he came as close to recapturing his 2017-18 form as he ever has done, scoring 10 goals and providing nine assists before everything went to pieces after the winter break.

Sane was far from the only player who struggled to perform in the second half of the 2021-22 season and he wasn’t helped by the switch to an unloved wing-back system that put him back on the right even though Nagelsmann had explained that Sane was more dangerous in his natural position. “On the right, he’s often in a situation that he wants the ball to his (left) foot, and then he’s with his back to goal,” the 35-year-old had said. “That’s not his greatest skill. On the left, there’s more depth to his game. It’s in front of him.”

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The current campaign’s numbers look quite good (13 goals, eight assists) but they mask inconsistent form and a sense that Bayern still quite haven’t found Sane’s best position. Thomas Tuchel has mostly played him on the right as well as occasionally through the middle since taking over, affording him nearly three full matches (he was substituted in the 89th minute of Saturday’s 1-0 win at SC Freiburg, having missed two high-quality chances to increase Bayern’s lead). The 49-year-old coach has professed himself “surprised” about the media’s focus on Sane, insisting the player should be protected. But the renewed attention also reflects high expectations of both men. Many believe Tuchel, a coach with a reputation for getting the best out of complex characters such as Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Neymar, can also help Sane reach his potential.

But until that happens, the rumours won’t go away. A recent story suggested Bayern would consider his sale in the summer unless he improves. The club have privately denied it in very strong terms but these kind of whispers speak to Sane’s struggles and how he is viewed in Munich.

Perception has been a big thing when it comes to Sane’s career. Part of the reason he fell foul of Guardiola and his coaches was that his body language is very relaxed, as if he does not care. Coupled with a general disinclination to work hard off the ball, suddenly his wonderful talents only seem like half the story.

He has not really been taken in by Bayern fans, partly because he has not embraced Munich as a city or bought into the club’s mythology, which is regarded as a must to be regarded as a club great. Ironically, given his mother and agent was cast as the instigator of his move back to Germany, some Bayern fans now believe his wife wants to get them back to England.

It emerged during the international break that Sane was in England, commuting between London and Manchester, because his wife had moved to the UK. She was criticised for that by Bayern fans and hit back by saying it was “impossible” for her to live in Munich. Sources, who remain anonymous to protect their relationships, close to the couple say their home was damaged by flooding.

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The other interesting thing about the story about Bayern being open to a sale and the rumours of Sane being back in Manchester is that plenty of City fans got excited about the prospect of a return. There is a section of the support who would ‘bring him home’ in a heartbeat, believing he would add a necessary dimension to the side.

In some ways, that is understandable. It is hard to forget the glory days of that 2017-18 season, with his 10 goals and 15 assists and, as much as anything, the art with which he racked them up.

It might even be true that, for some, Sane is loved more than other players who contributed more to the City cause. Raheem Sterling, in that sense, lived long enough to see himself become the villain at City, but was a more integral player.

And the Venn diagram of those who would like Sane back at City and those who think Guardiola’s best team was the 2017-18 version is very close to being a neat circle. The tactical flexibility, experience, versatility, belief and trophies accumulated over the past five years is all well and good but they do not have Sane running past people, do they?

The reality is that Guardiola has moved away from the more direct threat of Sane. City rarely face teams who give them space to run into and as a result, Guardiola wants his wingers to be better in the ‘small spaces’ so they manipulate massed defences. Against those teams especially good on the counter-attack, knowing when to take a man on and when to slow the game down so that everybody can get into position becomes even more important.

And they have to work hard defensively, of course.

After Jack Grealish scored against Liverpool last weekend, Guardiola praised how he “has the humility to run like a teenager” and, frankly, that is not something you are going to get from Sane. It is one of the reasons he left in the first place and it is not something that has majorly improved in recent years.

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That 2018-19 season was the beginning of the end for Sane at City. He was one of the few City players not to play in the World Cup, so he had a full pre-season under his belt. Yet Guardiola spent that summer batting away questions about how key the German could be, instead insisting that he needed to focus more.

By the beginning of September, Sane was left out of a matchday squad altogether and Joachim Low’s decision not to take him to Russia looked less like a misjudgement and more like a red flag. Over the rest of the season, he was in and out of the City team. Sometimes superlative, sometimes shocking.

Attempts to renew his contract were rebuffed and although that knee injury delayed the move to Bayern, he seemingly could not get out of Manchester quickly enough: with football returning after the pandemic in June 2020 and City looking to win the Champions League, Sane moved to Munich immediately, despite the fact he could not play for them until the new season.

So it may come as some surprise that not only has he been spending time in Manchester recently but that he speaks very highly of Guardiola. And though he is not tenacious enough without the ball to thrive in one of the Catalan’s teams these days, he is far from a brainless pace merchant: after years with Guardiola and Nagelsmann, he has a solid appreciation of the need to slow the game down before speeding it up, whereas some of his team-mates in Bavaria prefer the full-throttle approach.

And so the 2023 version of Sane is hard to pin down. There was a school of thought that he should have been played from the right wing for City, but he has not looked comfortable there for Bayern. His best spell was not on the wing at all, but as a No 10 in a system they have not played for 18 months. Against Borussia Dortmund last weekend, he came on as a striker to help Bayern on the break and was very effective.

In a sense, he sounds like more of a City player now than when he left, but that ship has surely sailed. And while he now has the opportunity to make things work under a third manager in Munich, it has not been a perfect match-up so far.

So bring him home? To where exactly?

(Top photo: Lars Baron via Getty Images)

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