Renato Sanches, the invisible wonderkid, goes from celebrity to the Liberty | Barney Ronay

Sep 10, 2017

Less than a year ago, Renato Sanches was the toast of Europe. On Sunday he will make his Swansea debut. So what went wrong for him at Bayern Munich, and how good can football’s captive prince still become?

Football has always tended to eat its young. Although not, perhaps, with such gleeful, richly rewarded haste as this. The ballad of Renato Sanches, European football’s great invisible wonder kid, is set to enter its latest phase on Sunday afternoon as Swansea City take on Newcastle United in their first game since Sanches joined on loan from the dingiest corners of Bayern Munich’s Säbener Strasse training complex.

From obscurity to celebrity to entropy to the Liberty. And all in less than two years. It is now 23 months since Sanches made his first-team debut for Benfica as a thrillingly ragged, thrillingly high-grade 18-year-old from the tough side of Lisbon. The timeline of that career parabola bears repeating.

Tags: Football Sport Swansea City