Paul Pogba: What went wrong for the Man Utd, Juventus enigma now facing football oblivion?

One of the clearest and saddest indictments of how Paul Pogba’s career has panned out versus early expectations came in the immediate aftermath of the news that the 30-year-old Juventus midfielder has been handed a four-year suspension for the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The joke was easy, obvious and widely parroted in one form or another on social media – Well, whatever he was taking, it wasn’t working!

Pogba, who has tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone, staunchly proclaims innocence. “When I am free of legal restrictions, the full story will become clear,” he said, insisting that he will appeal the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

If the ban is upheld – or even if, say, it is halved – it likely means the days of Pogba’s on-field prime are over. He will be 34 by the time the full suspension is served. It marks a regrettable bookend to a career that once promised so much.

But just how far – if at all – did Pogba fall short of fulfilling his undoubted potential?

His list of titles and accolades, after all, would be the envy of 99.9 per cent of anyone who’s ever dreamed of a life in professional football. He has won four Serie A titles, three domestic cups, the Europa League and, of course, the World Cup.

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At 22, he started in a Champions League final. Europe’s premier club competition is the biggest prize to elude him, but Juventus’ run to the final in 2015 was ended only when they met Luis Enrique’s Barcelona of Lionel Messi, Neymar, Luis Suarez, Xavi and Iniesta in Berlin.

Individually, he was FIFA’s Golden Boy in 2013, recognising the world’s top young talent. He was named the best young player at the following year’s World Cup, before going on to make the Serie A Team of the Season three times and the Premier League equivalent once.

Amazing Pogba career should have been even better

He was named in the UEFA Team of the Year and the FIFA FIFPro Best 11 in 2015. Although never a prolific scorer, he has notched in big-game situations, scoring in a World Cup final and a European final, as well as numerous times in derbies for Juventus and Manchester United.

If that’s underachievement, most of us would do well to underachieve half as much.

But the sense that Pogba left a large chunk of his potential untapped speaks to just what a unique talent he was upon breaking through, initially as a teenager at Manchester United and then with Juventus.

It was Pogba’s physical traits that first commanded attention – his 6ft 3in frame, his upper-body strength and athleticism. But it was his technical ability that, when combined with that physicality, that set him apart. His touch was immaculate, his feet were a flash of rapid skill moves. He could split defences with his passing and break nets with his powerful shot.

And it shouldn’t be overlooked that he was also a marketer’s dream, appealing to youngsters in droves for his eye-catching and ever-changing hairstyles, his eminently playground-copyable goal celebrations and the viral-worthy clips of his freestyler ball skills.

This rare blend of attributes convinced Juventus to pry the young Pogba from Man Utd’s grasp when his contract at Old Trafford lapsed in 2012. These same abilities, this time writ large after four glory-filled seasons in Italy, persuaded Man Utd to break the world transfer record to bring him back in 2016.

Man Utd and Pogba failed each other

It is perhaps also the uniqueness of Pogba’s skillset that doomed his second United stint to failure. Despite the club’s record £89million outlay to reacquire him, there seemed to be little understanding of exactly what to do with Pogba once he’d arrived.

At Juventus, he’d excelled on the left of a midfield diamond, with Andrea Pirlo dictating play at the base of the quadrant, Claudio Marchisio adding ballast and reliability on the right and Arturo Vidal as a shuttling chaos agent in the No.10 spot. Then, in the final season of his first spell in Turin, Pogba played as the No.10 – this resulted in then-career-best returns of eight league goals and a league-high 12 assists.

Back at United – across four seasons and under three different managers – there was no attempt to recreate the midfield milieu in which the Frenchman had previously thrived.

Juventus appeared to understand that Pogba was an accoutrement – a luxury item who could raise the ceiling of a team, provided sturdy foundations were already in place.

United, having paid so much to sign him, viewed Pogba as a foundation in himself. He played deeper, shackled with the kind of defensive responsibility that had always played into his weaknesses. Instead of operating as a sprinkler of improvisation in the final third, he was now asked to start, sustain and punctuate attacks.

He would only once with United eclipse his single-season high mark for goals from his Juventus days, scoring 13 in the 2018-19 season – although seven of those were penalties. And he was never able to match his tally of 12 assists; only once even able muster double figures, with 10 in 2017-18.

Throughout his four seasons back at United, Pogba was levelled with accusations of distraction and disinterest, and those are hard to refute. Even in the face of United’s systemic shortcomings, the player himself allowed too many matches to pass him by. He was rarely put in the perfect scenario to succeed, but a midfielder of such capabilities should not require perfection in order to perform.

Pogba was too often a passenger, especially in his final two seasons with United before leaving again for Juventus, again at the expiry of his contract – only this time few of a United persuasion were mourning his departure.

Turin, the second time around, did not offer greener pastures, either. Injury curtailed his first season back at Juventus and a doping suspension has obliterated everything after.

The failures are not all his own, but they are manifold enough that they will likely forever characterise a career not short of success. For a player who always courted the spotlight, and on whom, one way or another, everyone had an opinion, we hardly knew who Pogba was as a player and will always wonder what he might have become.

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