Nights like these are why Borussia Dortmund worked so hard to bring Jadon Sancho back over the winter.
Yes, club staff wanted to help him escape the exile he had spent months in at Manchester United, where he was banned from using first team facilities, was left to eat out of a lunchbox, made to train alone, and had no prospect of ever seeing match action after a public spat with Erik ten Hag.
But it was season-defining games like this one at home in the Champions League that they had in mind when director Sebastian Kehl and boss Eden Terzic FaceTimed Sancho with their plan between Christmas and New Years.
We’ll scratch your back, you scratch ours. Come and rebuild your reputation and make us successful; come ‘home’ was the pitch.
They had two questions on that call: was he serious about holding out on Ten Hag and was he serious about getting straight back into it with Dortmund? Yes, emphatically, was the response on both counts. Dortmund was, he told them, the only place he wanted to go.
Jadon Sancho celebrates with team-mates after firing Borussia Dortmund into an early lead against PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League on Wednesday night
The four-star hotel where Sancho is living during his loan spell at Dortmund from Man United
And so when Sancho, teed up by Julian Brandt, shifted the ball inside and fired low and hard into the bottom left corner to open the scoring in front of a vociferous Yellow Wall, Kehl and Terzic could both afford a smile.
The ‘SanShow’, as German newspaper Bild dubbed it, was back in business.
‘Pure footballing ecstasy,’ declared World Cup winner Sami Khedira. Both descriptions are hard to argue with.
‘It was like a relief,’ Sancho said of his goal. ‘I just wanted to have a good start to the game and there’s no better feeling than that. I’m grateful I got the goal for the team.
‘I’ve always got a special place for Borussia Dortmund: this is where I made my name. I’ve got to be grateful to them and my team-mates for believing in me.’
This was his first Champions League goal in 840 days and his first goal in front of home fans in Dortmund since May 2021.
When he was forced off 15 minutes from time with a hamstring complaint he did a lap of the pitch, soaking up the applause and the chanting of his name from every side of the ground.
This felt like a real needle mover in this stop-start second spell – now the onus is on him to keep it that way.
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