WHEN TWO EGOS COLLIDE
Pogba needs to feel special but Mourinho only wants players who run through walls for him
It says everything about the length of time Manchester United have been struggling to turn Paul Pogba into a world-beating asset that fax technology was the preferred form of communication when the efforts began.
It was May 2009 and internet reports had started circulating about their interest in the 16-yearold player of Le Havre, whose managing director, alain Belsoeur, faxed the then Old trafford chief executive David Gill to say he was French property.
United’s rapid response — a telephone call from then academy director Brian McClair and several faxes back — indicated their great interest.
Le Havre threatened legal action for a time, with United rejecting suggestions from France that the France Under 16 captain and his parents were paid € 200,000 (£172,500) and offered a house in Manchester to move.
Little did United know that within nine years they would have lavished £112.2million in transfer fees and wages on Pogba, signing him, losing him, winning him back and then finding that manager Jose Mourinho is — as revealed by Sportsmail yesterday — willing to show him the door again this summer.
Back in the early days of this star-crossed affair, sir alex Ferguson rather idealistically said in a discussion about Pogba that: ‘Matt Busby summed it up perfectly — you don’t need to chase money at a club like Manchester United. It will eventually find you. If you’re good enough, you will earn money and become rich playing for Manchester United.’
But it’s more complex with Pogba. He is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of the modern football super-ego and needs a manager who can intuit how to extract the best from him. that involves a basic grasp of psychology. But with Pogba and Mourinho, ego meets ego.
this manager has only one motivational method — instilling such devotion that a player will run through walls. the extraordinary feats this season of Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed salah — both Mourinho rejects at Chelsea — demonstrate that his approach can bring collateral damage for the clubs he leads.
It was clear from Pogba’s first spell at United that he did not care for authority. He wanted more than the 67 minutes of Premier League football Ferguson gave him in 2011-12 and his subsequent disinclination to hang around led to some brutal contract negotiations.
Mino Raiola, the hugely influential Dutch-Italian who became his agent after he had arrived in Manchester, told Ferguson that his own ‘two chihuahuas’ wouldn’t sign up to the terms of the oneyear contract United were offering the teenager. Raiola claims that conversation concluded with Ferguson directing a particularly foul four-letter term of abuse at him.
‘ I distrusted him from the moment I met him,’ Ferguson later said of Raiola. ‘He and I were like oil and water.’ so Pogba went to Juventus and won four titles working with antonio Conte and Massimiliano allegri — who saw to it that everyone worked around him.
Pogba displayed great potential in Italy, rather than proof of an entirely finished product. His best football came in Didier Deschamps’ France team as the best young player at the 2014 World Cup — again, as the figurehead, because Deschamps seemed to understand Pogba better than any other manager. ‘Privately, he (Deschamps) puts huge pressure on him, because he knows that if Paul is too relaxed, he can be bad on the pitch,’ one French source tells Sportsmail. ‘It’s a hard balance for those who manage him. you have to give him confidence, but not too much.’
the evidence of these past few years in Manchester points to a player whose raging ego requires similar nuance. When you strip away his accoutrements — the Richard Mille wristwatch, the Cartier diamond-hoop earrings — there is no sense whatsoever that the 25-year-old feels he has room to improve, despite an understanding of how life is on the other side of the tracks, instilled by an impoverished upbringing in Roissy-enBrie in the Parisian suburbs.
In retrospect, it didn’t help that his return for a world-record £89m, in august 2016, should have been accompanied by one of the most extravagant publicity campaigns football has ever known. United coined the #Pogback hashtag. there was the slick adidas promotional video with rapper stormzy on hand to collaborate. and accompanying lyrics delivered with neither a blush nor the remotest sense of irony.
‘Look, man, I’m the one they all fear. I was the man of the year last year... Now I’m the man of the year for a second year straight... sitting at the top, like, “Hold on is anybody there?”’
Pogba, it seems, is always more than happy to believe his own publicity. He rarely gives interviews or stops in player/journalist mixed zones yet he recently launched a monthly 10-minute programme on France’s Canal+ channel, called Pogba Mondial. the latest episode saw him and antoine Griezmann chatting about the importance of the French media praising the team during this summer’s World Cup.
the nation is not at all sure which Pogba will turn up in Russia. ‘He will be the player who helps France to win the World Cup, or the one who causes the team to lose the title,’ the distinguished
L’Equipe football writer Vincent Duluc observed. at United,
pogba’s sense of victimhood dates to January 31, when Mourinho’s unwillingness to shape the United team around him against tottenham led to a public disagreement between them.
No quarter was given from either side. pogba started just three of the next nine games. His performances have telegraphed his disaffection. He only burst into life against Manchester City this month after a pitiful first half. It was a mere 15 days after the tottenham disagreement that his wish to leave the club surfaced.
the stand- off explains pep Guardiola’s claim, before the teams met, that raiola had offered pogba to Manchester City — an act which could not have taken place without the player’s say-so.
pogba has been given an easy ride by fans on that one. A gang of United fans in balaclavas pitched up at Wayne rooney’s prestbury house when he seemed vaguely willing to join City in 2010.
pogba has said nothing publicly since April 7, when Guardiola’s disclosure about the transfer offer prompted his ‘Say what?’ reply on twitter. If paris Saint-Germain can swerve Financial Fair play rules to sign him, he could soon be strutting his stuff at a level way beneath his potential.
And Ferguson will not be the only one smiling ruefully. Arsene Wenger was also sniffing around in the summer of 2009 but he took Le Havre’s refusal to trade at face value and walked away.