Paul Pogba should have been one of the greatest footballers of all time: instead, he became the last of a very specific player

February 29, 2024 Sports 2 Views

Paul Pogba is just 30 years old – yet he likely won’t play football again. Certainly not at the top level.

Following a random drugs test in August, the World Cup winner tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone. He has since been banned from the sport for four years, essentially ending his second spell at Juventus, tarnishing his reputation and putting a big full-stop to ‘Project Unlock Pogba’, an almost-decade-long pursuit of the perfect environment to get the best from this star.

When Manchester United lumped a world-record £89 million on Pogba, complete with Stormzy unveiling video, the idea was there were few midfielders on Earth more complete. His passing range was exquisite, he was physical, he could shoot from distance and he could burn across the turf like the best. What transpired was, in the end, the opposite: Pogba floundered, with successive managers reconfiguring their entire teams, in ever-more desperate bids to get the best from him.

Paul Pogba in action for Manchester United against Aston Villa in 2021. — Pogba struggled hugely at Manchester United (Image credit: Getty Images)

Though this is nothing unusual from a millennial. When Pogba won the 2010 European Under-17 Championship, he was named in the team of the tournament. Rather than reading as a who’s who of those who dominated the decade, it makes for a quite sad reflection in 2024.

Ross Barkley never did quite reach his prospective peak, despite his solid season this year at Luton Town. Filip Twardzik is at LASK. Luke Garbutt is at Salford City. Andre Wisdom dropped out of the Football League, Yaya Sanogo was mocked as “Sa-no-goals” by Arsenal fans in his spell there, while Jese Rodriguez tumbled from Real Madrid to PSG to Stoke, before a spell in Turkey and relegation in Brazil’s Serie A. Jack Butland should have been England No.1: instead, he was badly injured (on international duty, actually) and has largely played backup across Britain since.

And this is just that specific tournament. Between Sergio Aguero’s 2007 Golden Boy and Paul Pogba’s in 2013, other recipients of the award include Anderson, Alexander Pato, Marios Balotelli and Gotze, and Isco. For every Iniesta, an Alen Halilovic. For every Kane and Sterling, a Jack Wilshere or Ravel Morrison.

Ravel Morrison celebrating Man United's FA Youth Cup win with Ryan Tunnicliffe, Jesse Lingard and Paul Pogba

Pogba’s hardly the only Manchester United academy grad to fail to live up to expectations (Image credit: Getty Images)

The difference between the landfill wonderkids and Manchester United’s dab-tastic midfield maestro, however, is that Pogba really did make memories to last beyond his short career span – just not at club level.

Pogba retires as an antagonistic anachronism: a man out of time with the rest of his generation. Back in your dad’s day, some players were simply more potent at international level – and we all thought that would die out with Miroslav Klose – yet here was Pogba, winning the Best Young Player at the 2014 World Cup, leading France to the final of their home Euros two years later, before becoming a World champion in Russia, in 2018.

He wasn’t just a ‘moments player’ for Les Bleus, either: he was the real deal. He would dictate games, with N’Golo Kante beside him for the dirty work. He would thrive on the biggest stages: he scored a World Cup final goal – but unlike Mario Gotze, he helped define his nation’s footballing identity for a while. Were he not brilliant on his day, perhaps Manchester United would have binned him sooner – yet those summer summons convinced them that there was a player in there somewhere.

If ever you need proof that the concept of time truly is mend-bending, Pogba getting injured before the 2022 World Cup was seen as a blow, back in France. Yes: post-COVID, Pogba was thought of as one of his nation’s top 20-30 players. He really was as good as they all said – just almost exclusively in a four-week window every two years.

Didier Deschamps holds the World Cup trophy in 2018 after France's win over Croatia.

Didier Deschamps got the best out of Pogba, somehow (Image credit: Getty Images)

Few fans will mourn Pogba’s forced exit from the game, given his perceived lack of effort, his ever-changing haircuts, his personalised emoji and his failure to live up to expectations. But his sort-of-retirement essentially caps the last of another great genre of footballer: the international specialist. The football equivalent of Michael Buble, hibernating for most of the year only to do their best work when flags are shoved in car windows.

The lineage is all but complete – from Just Fontaine’s 13 goals in six of 1958, to Mexico wheeling out Guillermo Ochoa for what surely had to have been the last time in Qatar. The blokes you’d never hear a peep from between the months of August and May, only for them to spawn into superstars exclusively when watched from beer gardens. The Lukas Podolskis, Fabio Grossos and Sergio Romeros of this world.

Farewell, Paul Pogba. You are a fine addition to the canon. Perhaps, had things been a little different for you – as with so many lads your age – you could have been a fine footballer at club level, too.