Yes, even at £100m Pogba would be a coup for United
Forget about the cash — football went mad long ago. Old Trafford needs this Frenchman to restore glory days
PAUL POGBA is not the best player in the world. He does not bring as much to a team as Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Or Luis Suarez, Antoine Griezmann or Neymar. He is an outstanding midfielder, certainly, but is he really worth £100million? Absolutely he is. Or let’s put it another way: he is worth £100m to Manchester United.
United have the cash. They’re swimming in it. Ed Woodward has sold the club’s soul to noodle partners, tyre partners, global spirit partners and Aeroflot. He’s had ninjas cavorting on the Old Trafford pitch at half-time in the name of cash. He committed the club to a shambolic tour of China this summer for money. They might as well spend it on something.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that United will have to pay over the odds for Pogba when the deal finally goes through. They don’t have a choice.
They are not in the Champions League so most of the world’s leading players are out of their reach. No one wants to sacrifice at least a year of his career away from the biggest club stage of all unless they are being extremely well compensated. United have to blow other suitors like Real Madrid out of the water with the extravagance of their bid.
In that context, the world record signing of Pogba will represent a coup for United when it is sealed. The money’s irrelevant if you’ve got enough of it. And United have.
COMPETITION for the most spectacular venue of the Rio Olympics is going to be fierce but the course covered by the men’s road race next Saturday will take some beating. The race starts and finishes on Copacabana Beach and takes in breathtaking climbs in the Tijuca National Park, which will be a television director’s dream. These Games will doubtless be criticised for many things but they will not lack for beauty.
Pogba’s a marquee player, a superstar, an icon to young fans. He is a name and United will take his fame and his earning power to another level to what Juventus can offer. The quality of the football might not be as good but, hey, you can’t have everything.
Don’t throw your hands up in horror and say football’s gone mad. Football went mad a long time ago. The idea of worth has become impossibly warped. The £100m player is the inevitable corollary of the game’s burgeoning wealth and the increasingly exorbitant TV deals negotiated for the Premier League so brilliantly by its chief executive, Richard Scudamore.
It is easy to understand Jurgen Klopp’s point about how spending that much on one player might threaten attempts to build a team, not just assemble a group of individuals. But the Liverpool boss may be being slightly disingenuous.
Surely it is up to a manager to ensure spirit does not suffer, no matter how much a new arrival costs or earns. And if Liverpool owners FSG said they would bankroll a £100m move for a player of Pogba’s quality, would Klopp really turn them down? Pogba represents real quality, too. He is the fourth in a list of very impressive acquisitions requested by new manager Jose Mourinho and sealed by Woodward that sends out warning signals to the rest of the league.
United have had enough of mediocrity and failure. For a club of their size, their history, they have spent too long in the purgatory inhabited by also-rans. They intend to contend for the title again.
The signing of Pogba suggests they probably will. He is not Messi or Ronaldo but he is still brilliant. Juventus just spent £76m on Gonzalo Higuain, don’t forget, which makes Pogba look like a bargain buy. He has the power and the vision to dominate and shape games. He knows what English football is about from his previous experience at its margins with United. Its pace and its fury will not be a surprise to him.
Mourinho’s idea, presumably, is that the Frenchman will start alongside either Michael Carrick or Morgan Schneiderlin at the base of midfield and give United the Rolls-Royce box-to-box player they have never really had since the demise of fiery Roy Keane. Will he improve United? Yes. Will he take them closer to the title? Undoubtedly.
His signing will be important in other ways, too. In their post-Ferguson uncertainties, United have been turned down by some of the game’s top stars. They had well-publicised attempts to sign Gareth Bale rebuffed. They were rejected by Neymar, too. Flirtations with Cesc Fabregas and Toni Kroos came to nothing. The two superstars they did sign, Angel di Maria and Bastian Schweinsteiger, were spectacular busts.
So United need a vibrant, new statement signing and Pogba makes
RUSSIA’S drastically downsized participation in the Rio Games brought an unexpected benefit to one of its competitors. When Russian president Vladimir Putin cancelled his rooms at the Sofitel on Copacabana Beach, they were gratefully snaffled by the Americans. In another sign of the times, all but a handful of rooms at the deluxe Copacabana Palace will be occupied for the duration of the Olympics by representatives of American Olympic broadcaster NBC. Given that the network recently paid $7.75billion (£5.86bn) for the rights to host the Games until 2032, booking out the best hotel in town for three weeks is small beer.
sense. He is an outstanding player who will give United strength and presence. Under Louis van Gaal, there often seemed to be little reason attached to his transfer policy. Some signings felt like panic buys that did not address the team’s problems. Mourinho has put that right.
He has identified problems and he has sought to fix them. Henrikh Mkhitaryan will add style and grace and guile to the United midfield, something else that has been lacking for some time. Eric Bailly should add stability to a United central defence that sometimes looked like an accident waiting to happen last season and has been rescued time after time by goalkeeper David de Gea. Zlatan Ibrahimovic is in the autumn of his career but he will bring his maniacal confidence and superb record to become the spearhead of the attack.
But Pogba will be the most important of all because he is the best of all. Ahead of a season where the title is likely to be wide open again, United suddenly look like a decent bet to win the Premier League. From fifth to first is a big leap, but Mourinho is hungry again and has plenty to prove after what happened at Chelsea.
Pogba will be the manager’s gift to himself, the man who might just lift United above a group of evenly matched contenders.
Before it became all but certain United were going to sign him, I thought the team that beat them would win the league.
Now I think United might just win it themselves. That’s what signing £100m players can do for you.