United fret over Pogba for Sevilla tie
Meeting at Roman Sanchez Pizjuan on Wednesday will be the first between the two sides in the competition
LONDON: Manchester United’s Champions League trip to Sevilla on Wednesday night is the type of occasion for which the English giants swallowed their pride to pay £89 million for Paul Pogba, four years after he left Old Trafford for Juventus.
Yet, it remains to be seen whether the French midfielder even starts for the first leg of the last-16 tie as much due to his form as his fitness.
Pogba hasn’t completed 90 minutes in a month and has been substituted in defeats at Tottenham and Newcastle, and dropped for victory over Huddersfield in between.
Reports in the French press emerged last week that Pogba is unhappy with the role given to him by Mourinho, in particular the defensive demands.
Mourinho pointedly said Pogba would have occupied his favoured role on the left of a midfield three for Saturday’ FA Cup win at Huddersfield if he had not been ruled out hours before the game due to illness.
The arrival of Alexis Sanchez on the left side of the United attack in January has exacerbated those differences as Pogba and the Chilean are yet to complete 90 minutes together.
Mourinho described rumours of a breakdown in communication between he and Pogba as “big lies”, but has not hid his criticism of the 24-year-old’s form.
“In this moment he is not playing well... and the team needs him at a good level.”
No more so than in the next few weeks as in between their two legs against Sevilla, United also host Chelsea and Liverpool in the Premier League with all three sides locked in a battle to finish in the top four.
“When he is not playing at a good level the team is not as good as the team can be,” added Mourinho.
“I think it happens with every team when the best players, the most crucial players, for some reason are not performing.”
For the hundreds of millions spent by United, Pogba remains the most marquee of all signings having beaten competition from around Europe making him then the most expensive player in the world in 2016.
The question remains whether Mourinho and Pogba can reconcile their differences for the common good.
Despite his stellar coaching career, it is not the first time Mourinho has failed to muster the maximum potential from a prestigious talent. Two of the frontrunners for Player of the Year honours in England, Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah, were disregarded by Mourinho and sold on the cheap during his time at Chelsea.
Not long after he returned to United, Pogba told French magazine So Foot he be “the new midfielder”. A player he defined as “can defend, he can win the ball, he can make the play, he can pass, he can score”. A concept that doesn’t sound too dissimilar to Mourinho’s definition of a boxto-box midfielder in recent weeks.
“(It) means you have to defend well, have the physical conditions to go to the other box, where you have to be good at scoring, creating, heading and then, when your team loses the ball, you have to go to the other box,” said Mourinho.
Time will tell if United’s star player and coach can harmonise their ideas on paper onto reality on the pitch.
WAR-HIT SHAKHTAR FACE ROMA
KIEV: War refugees Shakhtar Donetsk head into Wednesday’s Champions League clash with Italian side AS Roma in high spirits despite a lack of signings and sparse match practice.
The war in eastern Ukraine has forced Shakhtar to play their home games far from the Donbass Arena stadium for the past four years. Shakhtar, the only club from the eastern Europe in the knockout stages, will host Roma at their 40,000-seater Metalist Kharkiv stadium.
Roma come into the tie having topped Group C, while Shakhtar finished runners-up to Manchester City in Group F.