Euro 2020 ended barely five weeks ago; Copa America barely four. Hell, the Olympics ended last week, and now the new European club season is already here. Ligue 1 is underway, and the rest of Europe's Big Five leagues (German Bundesliga, English Premier League, Spanish LaLiga, Italian Serie A) will begin this coming weekend.
We'll have plenty of time in the weeks and months to come to talk about Champions League favorites, the Premier League title race or how hypnotic a hypothetical-for-a-bit-longer attack of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar might be. But a sport with this level of breadth and depth overflows with storylines at all times. I wanted to focus on 11 players, and the plot lines associated with them, that intrigue me the most as the season approaches.
(Does this list have more attackers than defenders on it? Absolutely. Goals are fun, and this is a list of mostly fun things.)
Jadon Sancho, the upgrade Man United have been waiting for
In his first season as a Borussia Dortmund starter, he scored 12 league goals with 14 assists at age 18. He followed that up with a 17-and-16 campaign at age 19. The England forward began slowly last season, then missed almost two months with injury and finished with only eight goals and 11 assists while leading BVB's late surge back into a Champions League position. (He had two goals in a vital 3-2 win over RB Leipzig, then two assists in a 3-1 win over Mainz 05.) In 21 career Champions League matches, he has five goals and six assists. He's still only 21.
Sancho is one of the best wingers in the world, even if, by his personnel choices this summer, England manager Gareth Southgate somehow sees things otherwise. But now he gets to prove himself at one of a small handful of clubs bigger and more visible than BVB.
With uncertainty around Paul Pogba's future at the club -- his contract expires in 2022, and there's been little notable movement towards an extension so far -- we don't quite know everything we need to know about how well Manchester United will be able to transition into attack this season. They did a large portion of their damage in short explosions in 2020-21 -- they scored 17 goals in possessions that (a) began in their defensive third and (b) ended within 30 seconds, most in the Premier League -- and that will likely remain a focus in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's system.
However, they could use extra help when it comes to pulling apart backed-in defenses, and Sancho's creativity will be vital if United hope to make a Premier League title push.
Like Olmo, the 18-year-old Pedri racked up the mileage this summer. He not only played at both Euro 2020 and the Olympics, but he played major roles, logging 1,188 minutes, creating 16 chances and completing 90% of his 817 passes. He was 65-for-67 in the Euro semifinals against Italy, the biggest match of his life to date.
Pedri now returns to a Barcelona that is, to say the least, quite different from the one he left at the end of 2020-21. Messi, the face of the club for nearly 15 years, is gone. Other signings (Memphis Depay, Georginio Wijnaldum, Eric Garcia, Emerson) have not yet been registered. After trying to bluff its way through a transfer window while over a billion Euros in debt (and unable to find buyers for any of its more expensive sale items), the club enters 2021-22 desperately uncertain in nearly every way.
The Blaugrana still have Pedri, however, and barring a truly shocking and desperate sale, they'll be able to retain his services for years to come. He's already one of the world's most reliable methods of "get the ball from Point A to Point B" transportation, and he might soon become the face of one of the sport's most famous clubs if he isn't already.
How he deals with all of this, especially after his summer star turn (and all those extra minutes in his legs), is one of the most fascinating stories of the season.
I wrote excited words about Szoboszlai back in February after he had moved from RB Salzburg to sister club RBL, noting how he was three players in one: a fun, progressive midfielder, a set-piece whiz and an outright star in the making.
This evidently jinxed him: a minor injury turned out to be a much bigger one, and not only did he fail to log a single minute for his new club in 2020-21, but he also missed what was still a solid Euro 2020 run by Hungary.
