The Pogba problem
Frenchman’s agent causes yet another stir at Old Trafford
“There’s no use ignoring it,” were the words of Paul Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola earlier in the week. “I can say that it’s over for Paul Pogba at Manchester United.”
The portly Dutch-Italian might well be the elephant in the room but when he is not he makes sure his clients are and none more so than Pogba’s protracted pandering for a move away from Manchester United.
As with the criticism of the Frenchman’s performances on the pitch since a world record move, his timing could not have been worse.
First of all Pogba had just had his first decent game in a while, scoring the first in Saturday night’s comeback win over West Ham United. Secondly, Untied had the small matter of a game against RB Leipzig on Tuesday, needing a point to progress in the Champions League knockouts.
Raiola was not having any of it. The time, he says, is right for Pogba to leave.
“It’s better to speak honestly, look to the future and not waste time trying to blame people,” the super agent told Italian outlet Tuttosport. “Paul is unhappy at Manchester United, he can no longer express himself as he wants to or in the way that’s expected of him.
“He has a contract that will expire in a year and a half, in the summer of 2022, but I believe the best solution for the parties is to sell it to the next market. Otherwise, the Old Trafford club, with which relations are excellent, knows that they would risk losing him on a free transfer, given that for the moment it is not the player’s intention to extend the contract.
“If people don’t get that, they know very little about football. In any case, they’ll all blame me if Paul leaves next summer.”
Pogba had been problematic for previous Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho and made no bones about his desire to leave the club again earlier in the year.
In October Pogba spoke of his desire to play for Real Madrid, describing the move as a “dream.” Solskjaer played this down and suggested that the player would see out his contract at Old Trafford.
The fact is that he has struggled to nail down a starting place this season since he recovered from COVID-19 and he missed much of last season with an ankle issue that caused division between the club’s medical staff and Pgba’s own advisers. That goal against West Ham was his first of the season, and he has only started five games in the English Premier League.
The 2018 World Cup-winning midfielder scored his second of the season on Tuesday but he was left out of the starting side again, though Solskjaer stressed it was nothing to do with Raiola’s comments.
That goal was also worthless in the end, United’s second as they failed to overhaul their German hosts’ 3-0 lead with yet another late comeback. Goodbye Champions League, Hello Europa League.
Should it also be goodbye to Pogba? You can understand that a player of his reputation does not want to be playing for the Europa League every year, while the chances of the Premier League trophy returning to Old Trafford for the first time since 2013 look like they will go on until 2022 at the earliest. But should they want to keep him? No is the firm belief of former Liverpool and England defender turned pundit Jamie Carragher.
“Get rid. I have been saying this for 12 months,” he said on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, speaking after Raiola’s comments.
“Oh my god, he is the most overrated player I have seen in my life.”
Carragher pointed the finger at both player and agent.
“I think the two of them are a disgrace,” he said. “We will all look at the agent now, and say ‘ask Pogba what he thinks.’
“Agents in this day and age are not just agents, they are a parent, the best friend, the financial advisor, they book holidays; they go away together.”
“He will be Pogba’s best mate,” Carragher said as he crossed his fingers to indicated their closeness. “So Pogba will be well aware of what was going to come out of his mouth. And if he wasn’t, he should sack his agent.”
Former Manchester United fullback Gary Neville, who sits alongside Carragher in the studio, was similarly critical on Twitter.
“However surely Paul knew he was making this announcement? If he wasn’t aware then we should see a quote from him very soon correcting his agent,” he wrote.
“Finally to do this ahead of Leipzig and the Man Derby is terrible timing for the team.”
United’s must-win game in Germany was lost and they go into the Manchester Derby on Saturday evening lurching towards another crisis. It is not all of Pogba and Raiola’s making but they have certainly not helped matters.
There is an irony to City being the next opposition for United as they deal with more Raiola fallout, though.
The agent had called City boss Pep Guardiola a “coward” and a “dog” but still offered Pogba to United’s Manchester rivals in 2018.
“We don’t have the money enough to buy Pogba because he is so expensive,” Guardiola said of the offer. “I’m surprised because I am a dog. He wants his players to come to here. So, no. No way.”
United have had their fingers burnt before by both Pogba and Raiola. The Manchester United youth prospect left for Juventus soon after signing with the agent, who then boss Alex Ferguson described as a “s**tbag.”
Ferguson’s first meeting with Raiola was a “fiasco” – “From then, our goose was cooked. He [Raiola] and I were like oil and water,” Ferguson wrote. So where can Pogba go? “There are only two clubs better than Man United, and that’s Barcelona and Real Madrid,” Carragher said.
“By better, I mean who players you can understand going to. So [Cristiano] Ronaldo goes from Manchester United to Real Madrid. Everyone sees Barcelona and Real Madrid as the pinnacle of club football.
“There is no chance in the world Real Madrid or Barcelona will buy him. I will be flabbergasted if they come in for him.”
They are the two biggest teams in Spain and arguably European – if not world – football. But Barcelona and Real Madrid are not having it all their own ways this season.
In fact, it is a season that could be described as a crisis for both managers, Real Madrid’s Zinedine Zidane and Ronald Koeman at Barcelona.
Both men are former players of their respective clubs, and European Cup/ Champions League winners with them to boot. Yet club legend status – and in Zidane’s case winning three Champions League trophies as a manager – does not make them immune from the axe.
It got closer for Koeman, the former Netherlands international player and manager who only arrived at the Camp Nou in the summer.
“I can’t explain it,” Koeman said of the goal scored by Alvaro Negredo that confined them to a fourth defeat of the nascent La Liga season.
The goal came from a throw-in taken by Barcelona’s Jordi Alba, which was then sliced by goalkeeper Marc Ter Stegen before Frenkie de Jong slid in as Negredo, as if in The Matrix, stood stock still to roll the ball into an emty net.
“You can’t let in a goal like that. We have done quite a few, and it hurts,” Koeman said.
“It’s incredible that we lost because of a goal like that, it’s an error you do not expect this team to make. It shows we were not concentrating,” Koeman continued. “The attitude was not good tonight. I’m very disappointed.”
The disappointment extended to his players. “Individual errors are costing us,” veteran midfielder Sergio Busquets said after the latest loss, and it was arguably three individual errors that led to the decisive Negredo finish.
It was a goal that summed up Barcelona’s La Liga struggles in a game that did much the same.
Once again they turned toward Lionel Messi, as they have so often done in the past, but this year – after a summer where he declared he wanted to leave before the board decided to air all of Barcelona’s dirty laundry in public – the Argentine seems a little more human, by his own superhuman standards.
Koeman described the defeat to Cadiz as a “gigantic step backwards in our chances of fighting for the league” and history would suggest he is right, despite the hopes of the club’s institutional director, Guillermo Amor.
“Just as we have dropped points, others will too,” he said, but will they drop enough for Barcelona to get back into the title race?
They are already 12 points behind Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid who top the table and they are six behind El Clasico rivals Real Madrid.
That is the same Real side who are in a crisis of their own, who went into last weekend’s game against Sevilla aware that it was a week that would likely decide Zidane’s fate.
He seemed aware of the fact before Real travelled to Andalusia, something that might have been made more clear by the fact that his side were to face
Julen Lopetegui’s Sevilla. Lopetegui was the man Zidane replaced when he last returned to the club, the former Spain man having lasted just 138 days.
“Yeah, yeah, for sure,” Zidane said in his pre-match press conference about the week ahead which started with Sevilla before a vital Champions League game against Borussia Mönchengladbach and then the Madrid derby against the league leaders.
“For sure, but it’s like always: There have been bad moments, criticism, and today’s the same. Maybe more than before, but no problem: I’m not thinking about that. I feel like the players are going to do it on the pitch. Tomorrow is an opportunity to show that we’re a good team.”
They did not necessarily do that, but they did get a win. The decisive goal was given as an own goal to Sevilla goalkeeper Bono but it was enough for Zidane to make it to midweek and Monchengladbach – a game that finished 1-0 with Real still in the Champions League.
Can he ever feel safe knowing that he is never more than two bad results away from another Bernabeu exit?
“I never felt I was, never,” Zidane said ahead of the Sevilla game. “Not as a player, a coach, or person. We’re all here for a reason; I’m here for a reason [to win], and will be until the last day.”
Zidane certainly made all the right noises ahead of the Sevilla win.
“It’s a difficult moment but what matters is coming together, following the same path and we’ll sort this out, for sure,” he said.
“I feel the support from the club and from everyone. I can’t be happy when we lose, no one can, the players included. But we now where we are: we’re fortunate to be at this club. We have to connect to do well.”
Their previous game had been a shock loss to Shakhtar Donetsk that made this week’s Champions League game make or break. Real Madrid is not a team that plays on Thursday nights in the Europa League.
Zidane – again before Sevilla – was adamant that he would not resign. “No, I haven’t thought about that at all.”
But the decision will likely be out of his hands when it comes – and it will come, it always does at Real Madrid, just as it does at Barcelona.
Defeat at the weekend – where Barcelona face lowly Levante – could spell curtains for both Zidane and Koeman.
The situations at both clubs means that no matter whatever else is going on – and there is a lot going on at the Camp Nou and Bernabeu this season – it is on the pitch where the managers are judged.
It is not just on results but the style of winning itself. Expectation is such that the context of the crises behind the scenes do not matter and even wins for both at the weekend might merely be stays of execution.
Will either boss still be there when the sides meet in the next Clasico in April?