French World Cup winner Paul Pogba received a four year ban from football at the end of February after testing positive for testosterone. The former Manchester United midfielder is set to appeal the verdict in court, but for now it seems that his career is effectively over.
After leaving Old Trafford for Juventus back in 2012, Pogba spent four successful years in Italy, winning the Serie A four times as well as two Coppa Italias and two Supercoppas to boot. On an individual level, the Parisian’s excellent performances in Italy convinced Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United to re-sign him in what was then a club and Premier League record £89m deal in 2016.
Nearly eight years on from what was meant to be a watershed moment for player and club, Pogba’s career lies in tatters. Despite flashes of brilliance in a red shirt, his tenure with the Red Devils has come to be seen as a symbol of the dysfunction and mis-management of the club in the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, leading to an acrimonious exit and return to Juventus in 2022.
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Pogba and Mourinho: ‘Virus’, Egos And A Strained Relationship
The Frenchman signed for Manchester United at the behest of incoming manager Mourinho in the summer of 2016, along with the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Eric Bailly. An £89 million fee certainly raised eyebrows, especially given the Red Devils, Ferguson, had let the midfielder join Juventus for just £1.5 million four years earlier.
As is usually the script with the Portuguese manager, things went well at first. Despite United’s relatively modest sixth-placed Premier League finish, the club finished the season with two trophies in the form of the Carabao Cup and the Europa League, the latter marked by a Pogba goal in the final against Ajax.
The first signs of a deteriorating relationship between player and coach came at the back end of the 2017/18 season as Pogba came under fire for a poor run of form, losing his place in the team to Scott McTominay. Not only unsettled on the field, the Frenchman was seemingly unsettled off of it, not helped by his agent Mino Raiola regularly intervening in the press to let everyone know just how unsettled his client was.
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This came to a head when Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, on the eve of a Manchester Derby at Etihad Stadium, claimed that Raiola had offered the midfielder to his club in the January transfer window, although the allegations seem to inspire the player himself, scoring two goals as United overturned a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 and delay the home side’s title party by a week.
Despite the constant noise and rumours around him, Pogba was a mainstay in a Red Devils side that finished second in the Premier League, 19 points behind City but having amassed the highest points total for the club (81) since the retirement of Ferguson.
This would prove to be the peak of Mourinho’s time at Manchester United, as the 2018/19 season quickly descended into untenable decline, a third-season slump typical of the Portugueseman’s later years in management.
Frustrated at not being adequately backed in the summer transfer window, The self-proclaimed “Special One” began to lash out at everyone and everything around him, with Pogba a particular target. After a disappointing 2-2 draw at Southampton, the two-time Champions League winning coach allegedly berated the Frenchman in front of the whole squad, referring to him as a “Virus” and adding his lack of teamwork and respect for teammates and supporters to the extraordinary rant.
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The writing was on the wall for Mourinho, who was duly sacked two weeks later after a dismal 3-1 defeat to bitter rivals Liverpool at Anfield with the team sitting in sixth place in the Premier League table. The jury is out on whether he was right to focus his ire on Pogba and why he was unable to unleash the full extent of the Frenchman’s talent, but a separation was clearly needed for the benefit of the club, the coach and the player.
Flashes Of Brilliance, Injuries And Wanting To Leave
The player’s form dramatically improved in line with Mourinho’s departure and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s arrival as caretaker manager. The former Juventus man finished the 2018/19 term with a career-best 16 goals and 11 assists in 47 games in all competitions, becoming an integral part of the Norwegian’s line-up as the Red Devils won 12 of their final 21 Premier League games.
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2019/20 was a season curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic and, in Pogba’s case, by injury, managing just 22 appearances in all competitions as United finished 3rd behind champions Liverpool and Manchester City. In addition to a miserable campaign with injury, the Frenchman and his camp continued to make rumblings about a potential departure, repeating that ” A new challenge” appealed to him and that there were question marks over his future.
As it was, the rest of his tenure at Manchester United was a microcosm of his career as a whole. He wasn’t bad in 2020/21, scoring six goals and providing nine assists in 42 appearances as Solskjaer led the team to a joint-highest finish (2nd) since Ferguson’s retirement, but you always felt there was something missing from his game.
At his best, Pogba is unplayable. A dynamic, energetic and technically extraordinary midfielder who honed his skills in the tough environment of the Parisian banlieues, he is capable of feats such as providing four assists in one game (vs Leeds on the opening day of the 2021/22 campaign), defence-splitting passes and eye-catching ball carries, as well as shooting from all ranges.
Incidentally, it is widely argued that the best performances of his career have come in the dark blue jersey of his national team, excelling in France’s 2018 run to lift the World Cup in Russia.
His final season in the Manchester red reflected the team. Occasional moments of genius as showcased in the opening game, followed by spells of lethargy as Ralf Rangnick, Solskjaer’s replacement at the helm after the Norwegian was sacked in November, could only drag an uninspired and disjointed side to sixth position.
Pogba returned to Juventus having been unable to live up to the potential and hype he promised upon his return to Old Trafford in 2016, triumphantly declaring ” I’m back” in an Adidas collaboration with British rapper Stormzy.
Some fans will lay the blame firmly at the Frenchman’s meteorically talented feet, while others will point to the haze of dysfunction and mediocrity that has lingered over Old Trafford in the past decade. In reality, it was probably a bit of option A and a bit of option B. There is no doubting the world-class ability of Paul Labile Pogba but, as his career lies in tatters and the footballing world is resigned to the probable extinction of a devastatingly unfulfilled potential, we sure wish we could have seen that ‘Pogboom’ a little more often.
