They have traded with the best in Europe over the last decade so when Borussia Dortmund’s sporting director Michael Zorc buys a 17-year-old footballer without a single competitive senior appearance to his name for around £10 million, the safe assumption is that the boy can play.

As it is, Jadon Sancho is one of the finest current prospects in English football, a star of the England junior teams and the brightest in a constellation of young footballers at Manchester City – or at least he was. When he turned 17 in March, the earliest point at which a professional contract can be signed, the expectation was that his would be the biggest deal ever for a boy his age, with £30,000 a week regarded as a possibility.

But he never did sign and that he came to leave the club last month is a source of great regret for City, who have established their formidable youth operation to find and develop players just like Sancho, a fleet-footed goalscorer of high technical ability. It would be right to say that this was not a happy departure on City’s side although they have a buy-back clause. Borussia Dortmund paid such a high transfer fee rather than the usual training compensation for a player on scholar’s contract because there was a serious market for Sancho.