England manager Gareth Southgate revealed Jadon Sancho’s training performances have improved over the last week.
Manchester United agreed a £72.9m fee with Borussia Dortmund to sign Sancho on Wednesday and the player is expected to complete the transfer after the Euro 2020.
Sancho has been restricted to only six minutes of playing time at the tournament but is said to be in line to start against Ukraine in today’s quarter-final in Rome.
The Manchester Evening News revealed last week that Sancho’s subdued training displays had contributed to his lack of game-time in the group stage but Southgate has seen an improvement over the last week.
“No, in fact I think Jadon over the last seven days has trained the best level in the time with us,” Southgate told ITV when asked if Sancho had been distracted by the transfer to United.
“You accept there are lots of ongoing transfer situations and nobody is coming in for talks, nobody is going out for talks.
“But we can’t stop people’s phones ringing and we can’t stop business happening outside of that and you just have to trust the players and they’re all very focused.
“I haven’t really had a long discussion with him about it at this moment, because that story’s been going on for 12 months. When everything’s confirmed I’m sure I’ll have a chat with him.
“But there’s so much speculation about all of our players, I don’t pick up every little individual piece but I’m checking in with the players every single day to see how they are and the biggest thing is he’s been very focused in his training and that’s been good.”
