I take NO joy from Pogba’s fall but he was dishonest and lazy... that’s why I got on at him
ICRITICISED Paul Pogba often during his career and some people seemed to take amusement from it.
But it was only sadness that I felt this week, when I learned he had been banned from football for four years, for a doping offence.
For me, there really was never any doubt about Pogba’s ability. What I saw in him was a player with great technical ability and physique who had the potential to be one of the best midfielders our sport had ever known.
It was his lack of honesty and poor effort levels which always frustrated me. Frankly, he was lazy. Someone with the extreme talent he possessed should perform in a way which means he is remembered as one of the best players in the world, long after he has left the stage.
Instead, he wasted his career. Having won the World Cup with France in 2018, he allowed himself to get into his armchair and was never fully committed to the cause of being a team player.
I criticised him to such a substantial degree — and take no satisfaction from saying I was proved right — because I could see that huge potential.
It was like when I was working as a manager/coach and would be constantly on to one or other of my players. They would say: ‘Why are you picking on me all the time?’ I would tell them: ‘The time to worry is when I stop talking about you and stop being critical of you, because that means I’ve given up on you.’
Pogba was certainly in that category. You would have persevered with him but I’m sorry to say he was lost after winning that World Cup. He was as good an example as you will find of someone getting too much, too soon. Riches. Fame. Winning the biggest thing you can win in football. It meant he rested on his laurels, basked in the acclaim and went through the motions.
He should have bowed out with multiple honours, remembered as one of the very best of his generation. Instead, he’s someone who wasted his God-given talents and athleticism.
I can remember going to watch him play for Juventus against
Real Madrid in the Bernabeu in the Champions League semifinal second leg in 2015. Jamie Redknapp had been raving about him. He told me: ‘Wait till you see him play.’ I was doing the game with Thierry Henry and Jamie and though he didn’t really do it for me that night, I saw a young man with enormous potential, who could be one of the greats.
We saw a glimpse of that three years later, in his performances for France at that 2018 World Cup. He played in virtually the entire tournament, missing only the last of France’s group-stage games, and I have to say that he surprised me with his discipline and industry throughout.
Suddenly, he wasn’t playing for Paul Pogba but as part of an overall team plan. There were times when we saw him tracking back with the same intensity he showed when running forward. By scoring France’s third goal in the final against Croatia, he effectively sealed the trophy.
I was still surprised to find him linked with Manchester City later that same summer. I said at the time I felt Pogba probably had more natural talent, if not more, than Bernardo Silva or Kevin De Bruyne. But who would you rely on to carry out the manager’s instructions for the full 90 minutes? It was a rhetorical question. That’s where the tragedy resided with this player.
We didn’t meet during the years I covered some of the big games he played in for Juventus and Manchester United. He did make noises he wanted to meet me at one stage and I said I was happy to do that, though it didn’t happen.
It’s sad that the drugs test found elevated levels of testosterone in his system. As if he didn’t have enough athleticism.
A drug like that would make him more powerful, with higher energy levels and it would also make him an angrier person to be around.
He is 30 years old and we won’t see him at an elite level again. A desperately sad ending to the career of someone who had the world at his feet and might still have been talked about, 20, 30 or 40 years from now.