Jadon Sancho: How single-minded schoolboy made his dream a reality

Jadon Sancho drops his schoolbag and sits down. His white shirt - sleeves rolled up and blazer discarded - hangs from his 14-year-old shoulders. His burgundy-and-gold tie is knotted loosely around his neck. He and his team-mates from Watford's under-15s have been excused from their classrooms and, one by one, called into one of the school's small upstairs offices.

Their coach, Louis Lancaster, is there to meet his players and discuss their ambitions. When asked what he wants from football, Sancho's reply comes without hesitation. "I want to play for England, and I want to play for one of Europe's top clubs," he says. "I want my family to be proud of me."

Aged 19, he has achieved all of those feats and his goal for Borussia Dortmund against Barcelona in the Nou Camp on Wednesday was his latest footballing landmark. Whether he has many more at the club remains to be seen,
with reports suggesting he is set to leave in January after a falling-out over "disciplinary issues". He is, it seems, wanted by many of Europe's leading clubs.

Being at the centre of such a high-stakes transfer saga is a world away from the environment in which Sancho gained his earliest footballing education. That came in the cages - the all-weather sports courts - near his home in Kennington, south London. He was childhood friends with Arsenal's Reiss Nelson and Ian Carlo Poveda, who later became a Manchester City team-mate. He was spotted by Watford aged seven and would travel across London three nights a week to train with the Hornets until, at 11, he was old enough to attend the club's partner school, the Harefield Academy in Uxbridge, west London.

The commute from Kennington to Uxbridge was too long to be feasible daily, and so came the first of many sacrifices the young Sancho would make in pursuit of his dream: he left his family home to move in with an aunt in Northolt, and was ferried the 14-mile journey to school by taxi each day. When boarding facilities were opened at Harefield, Sancho left his family to live on the school grounds.

From Monday to Friday, his routine revolved around football. Morning classes were interrupted for training. He'd return to school in the afternoon and, when the other kids went home, he'd have to make up for the lost lesson time before evening training began. Then it was back to the boarding house, rinse and repeat.

Perry Price was a left-back in Watford's academy and a schoolmate of Sancho's. "He's always mentioned big clubs - Real Madrid, Barcelona," Price tells BBC Sport. "It was always part of his plans. He sacrificed his youth for football."