When will Ed do his job and stop Jose fight with Pogba?
THE night Mike Tyson fought Andrew Golota, the referee was 5ft 8in, a guy called Frank Garza, from Michigan. Tyson was coming off a bout with Lou Savarese, in which he kept punching after the bell and hit referee John Coyle. He had bitten Evander Holyfield and tried to break Francois Botha’s arm. He had recently expressed a desire to shoot Lennox Lewis.
Golota, if anything, was worse. He was known as ‘the Foul Pole’ — it’s a baseball pun — and had bitten Samson Po’uha’s neck, landed a Yosser Hughes- style headbutt on Danell Nicholson and mistaken Riddick Bowe’s testicles for punchbags in both their initial fight and the rematch. Then there was the little matter of the riot at Madison Square Garden. When Tyson and Golota met one Friday in Auburn Hills, the combined purse was $11.5million.
Garza, who had worked all week as a senior operator at the Buckeye Pipeline oil refinery, was due one hundred bucks. Yet he turned up, still prepared to get between two of boxing’s biggest lunatics — because that was his job.
So when is Ed Woodward going to start doing his and step between Jose Mourinho and Paul Pogba? When is the executive vice-chairman of Manchester United going to earn the part of his annual £2.6m salary that rewards skill in negotiation? We know he can cut a deal with soft drinks companies in Nigeria, or wineries in Chile. We know he can get money transferred to Mino Raiola’s satisfaction. How about healing the schism between the two most important people at his football club: the manager and the star player? How about resolving the issues between Mourinho and Pogba before they overwhelm Manchester United’s season?
That is how it is playing out. Pogba (right) top of the agenda pre-season, before the first match, after the first match, continuing to dominate the headlines despite Mourinho’s endorsement and an impressive performance against Leicester. This should be a positive narrative: a World Cup winner returns, gets the captain’s armband, turns in a match-winning display.
Instead, there is a swirl of negativity around the club; a feeling Old Trafford cannot host two super-egos. Is this not the sort of conflict a mediator should address? Perhaps the man whose job it is to oversee the smooth running of a football club?
There is a reason Manchester United ended up in the control of the Glazer family. David Gill did not want to get his hands dirty over a racehorse. It was Gill who should have intervened when, in 2003, Sir Alex Ferguson announced his plan to sue United’s biggest shareholders, Cubic Expression, in a row over the ownership of Rock of Gibraltar. It was Gill’s duty, as chief executive, to inform him that wouldn’t be happening; Gill’s job to place himself in the middle of that fight and arbitrate. Like Woodward, he seemed too in awe of the manager, unable to point out to Ferguson the foolishness and futility of going to war with such influential figures.
This was no small claim either. The amount Ferguson sued for in Dublin’s High Court was £110m and no businessmen will surrender wealth of that nature without a fight. A dirty one, too.
As a result of Ferguson’s actions, Manchester United went through turmoil with smears and damaging allegations at the AGM. The compromise deal was worth £2.5m, by which time Manchester United were on the road to private ownership. The Glazer family bought out Cubic Expression and while that may not seem the worse deal now, that is to overlook the years of protests and anger that followed. And all over an external matter that should have been resolved by executive intercession. Pogba versus Mourinho is not an external issue. It cuts to the heart of the football club and who runs it and may even require a choice to be made if neither side will see sense. This being that there is no better player for Mourinho’s
Manchester
United than Pogba at his best and no better club for Pogba than United, given that Barcelona cannot afford him in the current climate.
It is bizarre to think the personal relationship between player and manager has soured, given how hard Mourinho fought to get Pogba in 2016.
SOME think Mourinho is a bully but he is as likely to be punching up as down and places huge pressure on those responsible for recruitment at his clubs. That summer he was relentless in his need to get Pogba hence what, at the time, appeared an extortionate fee. Pogba wasn’t a natural fit for Manchester United either, having lost him as a teenager, because no chief executive wants to be the one who spends £90m on a player his club surrendered for nothing. Yet Mourinho was insistent that Pogba was the key and Woodward went to extraordinary lengths to deliver him. Surely he now wants to protect that investment?
Equally, losing Pogba to Barcelona — if not this summer, then next summer or in the next transfer window — would not be like the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid. Ferguson always claimed that playing for Madrid was the player’s lifetime ambition; that this was a dream that could not be denied and United had done well to hold on to him for as long as they did.
There is no such history with Pogba and Barcelona. Yes, he might welcome a move to Spain now but would he feel tempted if his relationship with the manager was less fractious? There appears to have been an escalation in the past six months and few believe United’s protestations that all is well after Pogba’s cryptic comments last week.
What was it that he couldn’t say for risk of being fined? And for the health of all, shouldn’t he say it to someone, perhaps with his manager in the room, too, so they can sort it out?
It seems incredible, with so much revenue at stake, that more clubs are not committed to resolving disputes. That Chelsea did not move on Antonio Conte and Diego Costa sooner; that previous situations with Mourinho have been allowed to deteriorate to the point of crisis.
It may be that Woodward does not want to tell his manager the truth: that a modern player with a global following is seen as more valuable than a manager, who is more cheaply and easily replaced. Yet if that is the case, all the more reason to jump in the middle; to explain the need for compromise; to spell out the club’s position; to find common ground.
Garza got lucky the night of Tyson-Golota. The Pole quit the ring after two rounds, exiting unexpectedly through the arena kitchens. It is different for Woodward. He cannot afford to lose either of the participants. He just needs the fight stopped.