Paul Pogba bounded into his welcome-back press conference at Juventus as if he were on springs. “Ciao a tutti,” he said, flashing a smile at reporters. “I can see how happy you all are to see me. You've missed me.”
It was like Pogba had never been away after the six years he spent at Manchester United melting like one of Salvador Dali's timepieces. In ironic, dare I say tragic simultaneity, the Frenchman's renewed presence in Turin has sadly not stopped him from being missed either.
Pogba, who turned 30 on Wednesday, is still yet to start for Juventus since rejoining the club on another free transfer last summer. His “second” debut belatedly came a fortnight ago, the crowd at the Allianz Stadium warmly cheering Pogba as he warmed up on the sideline before making a 20-minute cameo in the Derby della Mole against Torino.
All of a sudden, the true potential of this Juventus squad seemed tantalisingly near with Pogba, Federico Chiesa and Angel Di Maria back available at the same time. It was a shaft of light pouring through the storm clouds that have gathered around the club this season. How depressingly fleeting it was, too.
Pogba was late to a team dinner at the J Hotel the night before the first leg of Juventus's Europa League tie against Freiburg last week and no exceptions were made for him. Max Allegri disciplined Pogba and sent the player home. Juventus sent a fine through in the post. “We expect Paul to be an example to the other players,” Francesco Calvo, the head of Juventus's Area Sport, said.
After all, this is the role Pogba promised to fulfil. “When I was at Juve (the first time around), I had experienced players around me,” he told GQ Italia. “I'm now one of those players. A Pirlo, a Buffon, a Chiellini. It's up to me to do what they did.” Seeking not to make a big deal out of it, Allegri insisted the whole thing was over before it even began. “He'll be available again tomorrow,” the Livornese reassured.
But Pogba was not available for long.
He returned to training only to tweak a muscle while practising free kicks. He missed last weekend's 4-2 win over Sampdoria and now faces at least three weeks on the sidelines. As he trudged out of J Medical, where he underwent a scan, the mood around him contrasted starkly with the joyous crowd that welcomed him back in July. The few autograph-hunters gathered outside were left disappointed as a disconsolate Pogba said: “Sorry, non ho la testa.” His head had gone.
“After the injury, Paul is a bit shattered by it emotionally,” Allegri candidly revealed. Seeing him so down was, on one level, something of a surprise. Pogba's agent Rafaela Pimenta has maintained that his “superpower is overcoming adversity with incredible resilience and great positivity”. This time, he instead appeared utterly bereft.
Pogba greets Juventus fans at the J Medical centre in July ahead of rejoining the club on a free transfer (Photo: Alessandro Di Marco/ANSA/AFP via Getty Images)
Rather than turn around his career, Pogba remains stuck in reverse. One annus horribilis has followed another and sympathy is in short supply.
Not that it should be entirely. For a start, Pogba's friend and mentor Mino Raiola passed away too soon in April. “I've got hundreds of stories about him,” Pogba recalled at the Golden Boy awards, such as the time Raiola told Sir Alex Ferguson “my dog wouldn't even sign that contract” and all the laughs they had together. “I used to make fun of his weight. He'd make fun of my hair.” It was the kind of light relief Pogba no doubt missed when life turned far too serious amid an alleged attempt to extort him which led to the arrest of five people, including his brother Mathias.
“It's now in the hands of the lawyers,” Pimenta informed Tuttosport. “Paul has done everything he could. He could perhaps have told me earlier but I understand. It's not easy to talk about these things. Often, you try to take care of it yourself because you're either ashamed or afraid. Once he talked about it, we were on our way to a solution. This kind of thing happens (in football) more than you might imagine.” Pogba's experience was so affecting that it even made Pimenta consider the development of a platform to help support players' mental health.
Juventus, meanwhile, brought back fond memories and seemed the right environment for Pogba to rediscover his smile and best form. “I felt the love from everyone,” he said at his unveiling.
His infectious popularity was clear during his initiation on Juventus' tour of the US. “Nice one, bro. The knee's better then,” back-up goalkeeper Mattia Perin called out as Pogba sang in French. But his right knee wasn't better. A check-up revealed Pogba had torn his medial ligament in training and would miss the tour, and the start of the Serie A season. The bigger question was whether he'd be fit in time to defend the World Cup with France.
At his unveiling, Pogba claimed a sign of his experience was how well he now understood his own body but his decision not to go under the knife and repair the ligament proved a grave error of judgement. By the time it dawned on him as he started running again at the beginning of September, it was too late.
Pogba made cameos off the bench against Torino and Roma before injuring himself practising free kicks (Photo: Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)
The knee still did not feel right and he submitted to the inevitable. By not having surgery earlier, Pogba wasted six weeks and missed the World Cup. Fabrizio Tencone, a specialist at Turin's isokinetic centre who used to consult for Juventus, opined on Sky Italia: “The fact he didn't have surgery beforehand went against science and from what I can gather, the medical staff at Juventus too.”
It led to real scrutiny of Pogba's priorities. For a start, it looked like Pogba had put France and the World Cup ahead of Juventus, compromising not only his tournament but his season as a whole. “I don't want to go over the past, nor do I want to cause controversy because, at the end of the day, decisions are taken together,” Juventus' chief executive at the time, Maurizio Arrivabene, said. “But we find ourselves in a situation that isn't ideal for us or for him.”
Pogba's Christmas on the Swiss slopes didn't go down well with Juventus fans either and they took to social media to insult him. The assumption Pogba was slaloming at breakneck speeds so soon after having his knee stitched up was addressed in a video he posted of himself hopping around on the snow without skis as he simply didn't have any and wasn't doing any skiing. But frustration was building and Juventus supporters wondered whether they'd see him in black and white at all this season.
Pimenta recalled Pogba telling her: “Enough, Rafaela. I don't want to have anything else to think about. I'm going to focus on my knee and my rehab because I want get back to playing.”
Pogba closed himself off and made it back last month — only now he's going to have to do the same all over again amid a percolating sense of buyer's remorse in Turin. It was in April last year that Arrivabene and Juventus's then vice-president Pavel Nedved swung by Pimenta's office in Monte Carlo during the Masters 1000 tennis tournament and learned Pogba was prepared to Pogback. “They said: 'Sure! We'd do it tomorrow. Would he come?'” Pimenta remembered.
Knowing what they now know, would Juventus do it all over again? Has it been worth it? Pogba, after all, was offered more or less the same contract the club withdrew from Paulo Dybala, not to mention the No 10 shirt the Argentinian forward so cherished.
Dybala was considered too injury-prone and not durable enough to deserve the salary Pogba now enjoys, which, at €8million (£7m; $8.46m) and another €2million in add-ons makes him the highest-paid player in Serie A. Dybala has since made 27 appearances for Roma, combining for 20 goals and assists, and scored a penalty for Argentina in the shootout that decided the World Cup final. Pogba, by La Gazzetta dello Sport's count, has cost Juventus €228,000 per minute for absolutely zero return on the pitch. He has missed 35 of 37 games.
It's reached the stage where a gesture like the ones made by Fernando Redondo and Mario Mandzukic at AC Milan would be much appreciated. Redondo, for anyone who doesn't remember, famously suspended his pay until he could play again after a prolonged spell on the sidelines in 2001, while Mandzukic gave up a month's pay in 2021 after a forgettable, injury-hit stay at San Siro.
Pogba is unlikely to do the same and hopes to still contribute in the run-in. So much was expected of him upon his return to Turin. Alas, he has been the most disappointing signing of the season in Serie A.