The dazzling and contradictory Frenchman shaped a new type of midfielder. Now his career could be over because of a doping ban. His decline began with a game against Switzerland.
The biggest thing about him recently was the hype: Paul Pogba has fallen deeply.
Gianluca Ricci / Image
Almost two years ago, Paul Pogba gave a remarkable interview to the newspaper “Le Figaro” about the darkness behind the glitter in his industry. “Sometimes you just want to isolate yourself, be alone,” he said. «You feel the depression in your body, in your head. . . But you can’t talk about it.” As a rich, privileged footballer, he always has to show strength: “We’re not superheroes, we’re just people.”
Pogba was specifically referring to a period in 2018 during which he was at loggerheads with Manchester United manager José Mourinho. He was publicly portrayed by the coach as someone who was harmful to the team; these were the first scratches on his image as a superhero. Pogba had previously become the most expensive footballer in the world when he moved from Juventus Turin to Manchester with a transfer fee of 105 million euros.
JUST IN! 😳
Frosty footage just in from @ManUtd‘s training session between Paul Pogba and Jose Mourinho… ❄️
What has been said between the pair this morning? 👀 pic.twitter.com/nRiTEgDJlH
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) September 26, 2018
They called it the “octopus” because its long legs pulled the ball as if it were stuck to its tentacles
Now you think about the interview and wonder how Paul Pogba must be doing in his Turin villa. Because that argument with Mourinho was just a small matter compared to his last two years. Between many injuries and obscure affairs, Pogba, 30, has made a dramatic decline from football’s Olympus. Last Thursday he arrived in the Hades of a professional athlete: The midfielder, now back at Juventus, was banned from working for four years because of doping.
Pogba wrote that he received the news “sad, shocked and broken-hearted.” “Everything I built up in my professional career has been taken away from me.” The verdict of the Tribunale Nazionale Antidoping was “incorrect”; he had never “knowingly” used performance-enhancing substances.
His positive A sample for testosterone after a league game in Udine in August 2023 and the B sample for the anti-aging steroid Dhea can be explained by a dietary supplement that is legal in the USA and that he took there during the summer holidays – so he had he presented it in the process. “If I am free from legal constraints, the whole story will clear up,” he wrote. For now, his lawyers are considering an appeal to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS) in Lausanne.
They are fighting for the last remnants of a career that seemed to propel Pogba to world football during his first time at Juventus. Pogba was considered an athletic sensation with perfect technique and exuberant creativity – the prototype of a fusion such as Jude Bellingham would embody a decade later. They called Pogba “Il polpo,” the octopus, because his long legs pulled the ball as if it were stuck to his tentacles.
The 2021 European Championship round of 16 against Switzerland was something like his last big match
At the home European Championships in 2016, when no one had heard of Kylian Mbappé, Pogba was made into France’s great figure and greeted everyone on the front pages. He then fulfilled the promise with Mbappé two years later at the World Cup in Russia. Pogba shone on the pitch during the title win, as a scorer in the final, as a leader in the dressing room and at the celebrations in the Élysée Palace.
But otherwise the biggest thing about him was the hype. The agency of his agent Mino Raiola, who has since died, turned the dazzling boy from the Paris suburbs into a money machine and fictional character. A “brand” that “we created” to “entertain people”: This is how Raiola’s lawyer and successor Rafaela Pimenta described her work in the documentary “The Pogmentary”. She was able to make use of Pogba’s natural extroversion, his laugh, his showmanship, his hairstyle changes, and a sales-promoting unpredictability.
But the footballer Pogba also became more and more erratic. In the legendary European Championship round of 16 against Switzerland in 2021, his career was condensed into a single game. With blue and golden yellow stripes in his hair, he scored the goal with a dream shot to give the team a 3-1 lead and then put on a colorful celebration choreography. But: A few minutes later he initiated the Swiss comeback by losing the ball and argued on the pitch with his partner Adrien Rabiot. Heaven and hell, eulogies and criticism: When France was eliminated on penalties against Switzerland, once again nobody knew what to make of this player.
That round of 16 was something like Pogba’s last big match. When he returned to Juventus in the summer of 2022, he became the highest-paid professional in Serie A and moved into Cristiano Ronaldo’s former property in the hills of Turin. But since then he has been on the pitch for a full 213 minutes. Knees, groin, adductors, thighs: there was always something, even before the doping ban. It almost seems as if Pogba has been put under a spell.
Paul Pogba (center) is still being celebrated in the 2021 European Championship round of 16 against Switzerland in Bucharest. He scored a dream goal – but in the end France were eliminated.
Vadim Ghirda / AP
What is he: reflective critic or loud-mouthed chosen one?
Pogba himself had hired a marabout – that much is undisputed in a mysterious matter that became public in 2022. According to his brother Mathias, Pogba paid the Islamic magician to put a curse on his national team teammate Mbappé.
In the course of this, the public learned of Pogba’s blackmail, in which former friends and possibly his brother Mathias are said to be involved. A reaction to the doping ban also testified to a break in the family. Florentin, another brother, posted on Instagram: “Courage PP: Allah has everything under control” – and two laughing emoticons.
Paul Pogba testified during the trial that he had asked the witcher for support for children in developing countries. The Marabout, a long-time confidant of the professional, confirmed this account. In fact, Pogba’s commitment to the fight against poverty is also documented elsewhere.
Who is the real Paul Pogba? A dazzler, as one brother says? Or an empathetic donor? A “leader, always positive,” as France’s national coach Didier Deschamps once put it? Or an “anti-captain,” as José Mourinho said? Is he the reflected critic from “Figaro”? Or the loud-mouthed chosen one he was portrayed as in the film “The Pogmentary”? By the way, the five-part documentary flopped tremendously. Like everything lately when it comes to Pogba.
Trailer for the documentary “The Pogmentary”.
Youtube
His national coach Deschamps was also surrounded by doping
Intentional doping? Or just carelessness? The loyal Deschamps continues to support Pogba: “His situation makes me sad and I hope with all my heart that it can be arranged.” “Not for a moment” could he imagine Pogba having any intention of cheating.
Deschamps is also an interesting voice in this case because he also played for Juventus in the 1990s – in a team that was demonstrably doped. The team doctor at the time, Riccardo Agricola, was found guilty in the first instance in 2004 and, after various appeal proceedings, remained free only because the statute of limitations had expired. In 2017 he took over the care of the Juventus professionals again, via the health agency J Medical, which was attached to the club.
The people of Turin took note of the ban for Pogba coolly. It even comes in handy because they save a lot of money for a professional who is always injured anyway. If an appeal does not at least halve his sentence, which he is said to have rejected during the trial as part of a settlement offer, Pogba’s ban will run until October 2027. His contract in Turin expires in 2026.
A decision from the TAS could be expected in early summer. Then France’s team will be at the European Football Championships without a professional who, for a long time, perhaps only himself recognized what everyone knows today: that he was not a superhero.