“My heart is broken. They have taken away everything that I have built as a professional,” cries Paul Pogba, who will turn 31 in a fortnight with the prospect that his career as a footballer has been cut short. The Italian Anti-Doping Court informed him this Thursday that it accepted the Prosecutor’s request to apply the maximum sanction, four years, after his positive result for dehydroepiandrosterone, a substance also known as dhea that serves as a stimulant to accelerate anti-aging and body-building processes. The Juventus player, with whom he has a contract until June 2026 that could be terminated, is penalized because they do not believe his excuse that he was the victim of an accidental ingestion allegedly advised by a doctor outside the Turin club. “I will appeal,” announces Pogba, who assures that everything will be clarified in due course. “I have never knowingly or deliberately taken a supplement that is against the rules. “I have not deceived either my colleagues or my followers,” he defends himself.
But Pogba’s star is fading. The exuberant midfielder who covered meters with plethoric strides and whom sir Alex Ferguson signed twice. He first recruited him from French Le Havre when he was barely 16 years old in a move that had to be validated by FIFA and later signed him for 105 million euros after four triumphant seasons at Juventus, a club he joined after playing just seven games as a youth player. Manchester United and sign an abrupt exit. “He has not shown respect. Let him leave, the further away the better,” Ferguson concluded. Then he renounced himself when Pogba, at 23 years old and having won four league titles in Italy, seemed like he was going to dominate a football that was moving towards a frenzy of transitions.
It was on that stage that Pogba, the son of Guinean immigrants who became world champion with France in 2018, was expected, coached by Didier Deschamps, perhaps the coach who understood him best. “He is a leader, he is always positive off the field and on the pitch he knows what he has to do. The image of his eccentricity does not correspond to what he is,” the French coach defines him. Because football has too often taken a back seat with Pogba, who in recent years has entered a destructive spiral since shortly after winning the World Cup, with his goal included in the final against Croatia, his relationship with José became strained. Mourinho, who withdrew his captain’s stripes at Manchester United.
With the Portuguese he won his only continental title, the Europa League, but their relationship also ended very worn out. “I had depression. Sometimes you don’t know what you are, you just want to isolate yourself and be alone. And that is an unmistakable sign. You ask yourself questions, you question whether the fault of some situations is yours. Athletes earn a lot of money, but that does not mean that we go through difficult times like everyone else,” he said in an interview with Le Figaro two years ago, shortly before his agent Mino Raiola died. He was still going to fall into a more sinister hole.
In September 2022, his brother Mathias and three other people were arrested on charges of forming an armed gang organized to carry out extortion. Paul Pogba came to pay them some amounts just when he had just finished his contract with Manchester United and signed a contract of 8 million euros net per year to return to Juventus. Witches and sorcerers completed a panorama that led to the footballer’s new journey in Italy beginning under police protection. It was then that he delayed a surgical solution to get ready after a knee injury suffered in the preseason. He wanted to reach the World Cup in Qatar. He didn’t make it. Shortly afterward he posted a photo on social media of him skiing in a Swiss mountain resort. The criticism intensified.
Last season he only took the field six times in half a dozen League games, another three in the Europa League and one in the Cup. He did not play for half an hour straight. He has not returned to the national team, with which his last full game was the final of the Nations League won against Spain in October 2021 before playing two friendlies in March 2022. This season he took the field as a substitute in the second and third day, just before the news of his positive in the match against Udinese, which he watched from the bench, became known. He waived a plea deal that would have cut the harsh four-year penalty in half. “When I am free of legal restrictions, I will reveal how this whole story has been, but I would never do anything to improve my performance using prohibited substances,” he guarantees.