Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho may now be cross-city rivals but the former has shown his support for the exiled Manchester United winger.

Sancho hasn’t featured for the Red Devils since their 3-2 win over Nottingham Forest on August 26, following his very public disagreement with Erik ten Hag.

The 23-year-old has been training alone since October after failing to apologise for hitting back at Ten Hag questioning his training performances when he was dropped for their 3-1 defeat at Arsenal on September 3.

It’s been more than four months now since £73million signing Sancho has played first-team football, but Manchester City striker Haaland took to social media on Wednesday to remind everyone of the qualities of his former team-mate.

Sharing a picture of the pair celebrating winning the 2020-21 German Cup while at Borussia Dortmund, Haaland lavished praised on Sancho by calling him a ‘proper football that’ accompanied with an emoji of love hearts for eyes.

Erling Haaland (left) has come to the defence of ex-Dortmund team-mate Jadon Sancho

Haaland took to Instagram to post a pic of them at Dortmund hailing Sancho as a ‘proper baller’

Sancho and Haaaland

Sancho and Haaland enjoyed a prolific 18 months together at Dortmund – with their sole full season together in 2020-21 together yielding 57 goals and 32 assists.

That summer Sancho joined United but as detailed on Thursday, an impasse of Sancho’s immediate future looks set to end with a return to Dortmund on loan.

German newspaper Bild are reporting the loan until the end of the season is close to being a done deal.

Their report says only tax details have to be sorted out now and Sancho could report to Dortmund’s winter training camp in Marbella, Spain as soon as Friday.

The deal will cost Dortmund only around £2.6million overall, they say.

Sancho was banished to train with United’s academy by Erik ten Hag earlier on this season