Paul Pogba is a huge talent but never learnt to live with the fame… now his career could be over
LIVING with fame is hard for some footballers. With Paul Pogba it is a revolving ordeal.
Now just as we thought the Frenchman was settled with Juventus, that headline writers here could stop trying to find rhyming nouns with the Frenchman’s strange (to us, anyway) surname, up he pops again.
This time with an alleged offence that could end his football career.
The World Cup winner is reported to have had a positive test for testosterone, a drug that has been taken illegally for years in helping build muscle and bone mass.
Sylvester Stallone uses it and look where it took him. Maybe Stallone and many other testosterone replacement therapy users also rather liked the idea of its association with increased aggression, violence and sex drive.
For Pogba, if correct, it would appear to have been aimed at extra zip.
Whether the Italian authorities noticed a difference in his performances in matches for Juventus is doubtful but someone discovered evidence for a possible long-term red card.
Pogba’s second time at Old Trafford was a mockery of his then-world-record transfer of £89million, paid in 2016. His agent, the late ingrate Mino Raiola, was paid at least £27m by Juventus for his part.
I’m reasonably sure he wasn’t from Mars but sometimes his colourful haircuts made me wonder what David Bowie would dream up for him.
There were times when he could rule a match and on £15m a year so he should.
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United fans will judge whether he was good value. He did play three times for them as a lad in 2010-11 and 236 games with 39 goals in the six seasons after he returned from Juventus.
United were rewarded with two trophies and a variety of upsets in and out of the dressing room.
Because, by then, Pogba, such an independent spirit that in various times he fell out with Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho could be named alongside the world stars of football.
He had been directed towards that target by his mother whose marriage split up soon after the family moved from Guinea to east Paris.
Young Paul was a huge talent and the temptations to move from Le Havre boys’ team to one of the biggest clubs in the world were sufficient for him to sign at 16. Le Havre contested it but eventually went away.
I suspect Pogba is not as self-confident as he appears. Surrounded no doubt by hangers-on and chancers, threatened with extortion by one of his twin brothers, kidnapped, often injured and derided, it would be surprising if he did not feel cornered by his notoriety.
It says a good deal that he has never branched out from the only two clubs for which he has ever played.
Fame is no protection, nor are yes-men as other stars discovered… from Paul Gascoigne to George Best to Diego Maradona.
The glamorous lifestyle did not hide the weaknesses, controversy chasing them through the post-football years. Will Pogba go the same way? Now 30, he could be banned from playing for two to four years.
This is how he feels: “Sometimes I was just by myself thinking: ‘I don’t want to have money anymore. I just don’t want to play anymore. I just want to be with normal people, so they will love me for me — not for the fame, not for the money’.”
It’s heart-breaking.