Paul Pogba's Second Second Chance 👤

Greetings from Yorkshire!

Rory Smith writes: For now, anyway. This time next week, I’ll be in the United States, spending July 4 in Philadelphia, celebrating a date that apparently has some sort of historical significance in the most appropriate way imaginable: watching (probably) Chelsea play a (definitely) Brazilian team in the quarterfinals of the Club World Cup.

The real treat comes after that – and a brief detour to East Rutherford, NJ – when I have the privilege of spending an entire week with Rog. We’ll be doing live shows in New York City around both of Giannipalooza’s semifinals, as well as recording live at MetLife before, after, and quite possibly during the final. 

All of that means I need your help. I’ve never been to Philly, so if you have, then any and all food recommendations are more than welcome. (Activities, too, though my time is limited and I am there – this has to be stressed – for work.) And if there’s anywhere in NY that you really love, then I’m open to suggestions there, too. In exchange, I’ve written this week about the most interesting transfer of the summer: Paul Pogba’s second second chance. It seems a fair swap.

Enjoy,

Rory

Paul Pogba: The Forgotten Man 👤 

Maybe it is the benefit of hindsight, but it is hard not to suspect that Paul Pogba knew something was coming. In September 2023, the Al Jazeera journalist Iman Amrani met the midfielder in the Italian city of Turin for what turned out to be an unusually frank interview. They discussed the sorts of topics most athletes tend not to touch: police violence, personal trauma, private despair.

Pogba had long had an uneasy relationship with the media, but he did not shy away from any of them. There were times, he said, when he didn’t, “want to have money any more, to play anymore. I just wanted to be with normal people, so they will love me for me, not for the fame, not for the money.” Football was beautiful, he said, but it was also, “cruel. People can forget you. You can do something great, and the next day, you’re nobody.” 

That last line would turn out to be prophetic. The interview aired on the channel’s Generation Change strand on September 11, 2023. On September 12, Italy’s national anti-doping agency released a statement revealing that the Frenchman had failed a drug test after Juventus’ win in Serie A against Udinese a few weeks previously. They had found elevated levels of testosterone in his sample, produced after he had been randomly selected for testing despite not actually playing in the game.

Juventus confirmed one of its highest-paid players had been given a “preliminary suspension order.” Pogba’s agent, Rafaela Pimenta, said that he had not knowingly broken a rule; whatever had caused him to fail the test had been taken unwittingly. Pogba has always protested his innocence. Juventus said, at the time, that it reserved the right to consider “the next procedural steps.” 

If that sounded like the Italian side was prepared to stand by the player, to help him with his defense, it did not quite work out like that. In February 2024, he was banned from playing for four years; that was later reduced on appeal to 18 months. Juventus terminated his contract in November last year. Though Pogba initially thanked the club for its support, he has subsequently suggested that Juventus ignored his requests for “treatment” or “a trainer” during his ban. He had, effectively, been erased from their minds. For much of the last two years, Pogba has essentially been nobody.

There is a telling of Pogba’s story in which that is a fitting end. His star had been waning, in truth, for some time before he was formally ostracized from the game. His world-record move to Manchester United was, for the most part, an anticlimax. Rarely, if ever, did he look like the player who had shone so brightly in his first spell with Juventus, or who had played such a vital role in France winning the World Cup in 2018 ; rarely, if ever, did he come close to justifying his $122 million fee.

He spent a good portion of his last couple of years at the club trying to leave. In the end, he was ushered out of the door on a free transfer, returning to Juventus in 2022. Even then, injury restricted him to just a handful of games.

A strand of thinking took hold that Pogba had always been something of a myth, all style and no substance. His critics picked over his body language, his swagger, his constantly rotating hairstyles, even the fanfare with which United had initially revealed his signature – as my colleague Miguel Delaney put it on Libero, it was possibly the first major transfer whose announcement was designed purely around social media – as proof that he had always, in some way, been unworthy. He had been disregarded as an elite player, one of the game’s best, long before he disappeared.

But a different interpretation is available. Nobody has ever doubted Pogba’s talent. “Extraordinary,” Zinedine Zidane called him, before he had signed for Manchester United. Paul Scholes, the United legend not known for his effusive praise, once said he had “all the ability in the world.” Hugo Lloris, the former France goalkeeper, regarded him as a “a leader.” Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer believed he “can do everything.” José Mourinho described him as “one of the best players in the world.” 

That he has never quite lived up to those assessments is a reminder – always salutary, especially in transfer season – that ability may well matter less than context. Pogba’s lavish gifts could not be truly fulfilled because of the circumstances in which he found himself after his return to Old Trafford in 2016: at a failing Manchester United, then at a crumbling Juventus and, most importantly, in an era of soccer fandom increasingly driven by the need to create viral rage-bait that played well on social media. Pogba was destroyed, in some way, by the same force that had created him.

In that telling, he deserves a different sort of ending: a shot at redemption, a chance to prove that all the hype was not misplaced. When his ban ended, back in March, he might have taken the path of least resistance: he had offers from clubs in Saudi Arabia and Major League Soccer, places where he might at least monetize his comparative anonymity.

He has turned all of them down. Pogba, now 32, has signed a two-year deal at Monaco. It will be the first time he has ever played domestic soccer in his homeland. It will be the first time he has played in the Champions League since 2022. It will give him the chance to remind Europe of what he was, of what he could have been, to make sure that he does not have to be nobody any more.

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The Transfer Market Through the Eyes of a Child 👁️

At the age of seven, my son is still coming to terms with the idea of transfers. The notion that his heroes might age is alien to him; the concept that some of them might need to be upgraded is somehow horrifying. He would not be on board with Liverpool selling Andy Robertson to Atlético Madrid, for example, though he has declared that it would be “nice” for Robertson to “see his friend” Trent in the Spanish capital.

There is one prospective deal that has won his seal of approval. By all accounts, Napoli are currently engaging in some sort of discourse with Liverpool over signing Darwin Nuñez. This unites two subjects on which my son has firmly established views. He regards Nuñez, admiringly, as “crazy.” At one game last season, he turned to me and said that Liverpool should bring Nuñez on just to “have a nice run around.”

He also considers himself a sort of honorary Neapolitan. We were in Naples a few weeks before Napoli won Serie A in 2023. The city was festooned with sky blue bunting. He wandered perfectly happily through the packed streets of the Quartieri Spagnoli, wearing his knock-off Kvaratskhelia jersey, mouth agape at the noise and the color and the warmth. He wants to watch Napoli games almost as much as Liverpool ones.

Anyway, I mentioned to him the other day that Darwin – we’re on first name terms in our house – might be moving to Napoli. He thought about it for a moment. I was worried he might be sad to see a player with whom he feels a kind of kinship leave. But instead, he smiled. “That would be good,” he said. “Darwin is crazy and Naples is crazy. They’d like him.” 

What I’ve Been Writing and Reading ✍️📚

• Florian Wirtz and Rayan Cherki – among others – made me wonder if the number 10 might be back. That would be a good thing, I think.

• Britain may not actually want it, but this is going to be an Oasis summer, no matter how old you are.

• Do you remember Gap? Apparently it might be a thing again.

A Few Recommendations 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

As always, this newsletter regards itself as largely an exercise in service journalism, so thanks to Rebecca Fuerst for emailing ([email protected], feel free) to ask for recommendations for an upcoming trip to the U.K. Rebecca and her partner are going to take in an Arsenal game, but “will also be visiting Edinburgh and parts of the Scottish Lowlands/Highlands. Please tell us where to eat in Edinburgh and the surrounding areas. Also any recommendations on Scottish Premiership games, stadiums etc? The schedule hasn’t come out yet but we may travel to see a game if there is one that catches our eye.”

Fortunately, you won’t have to travel very far. Tynecastle, home of my favored Scottish team, Hearts, is a wonderful, old-school British stadium, and from memory it’s basically walkable from the city center. My instinct would be to say it’s unlikely to sell out, so tickets should not be a problem. And if Hearts aren’t at home: Easter Road, where Hibernian plays, is in increasingly trendy Leith, so well worth a detour. Also Hibs have the best anthem in European soccer. Either one works. Maybe both if you can.

As for eating, there’s almost too many for me to choose: Edinburgh, thinking about it, is my favorite city in Britain. Stockbridge is as good a bet as any for places to eat – you’ll find basically anything you like; there’s excellent Thai and tapas – but I’d single out The Scran and Scallie, run by chef and more importantly Liverpool fan Tom Kitchin, as especially great. Two other quick recommendations: Coruisk House on the Isle of Skye, if you go that way, and the candy store I regard as the greatest in the world in the (nice, but unremarkable) town of Moffat. Have a great time!

That goes for the rest of you, too, even if you’re not going to Scotland any time soon. Enjoy the start of the Club World Cup knockouts, and I hope the USMNT delivers a reason to cheer over the weekend, too. And remember your recommendations for Philly and NYC: [email protected], and I’ll offer you my thoughts on the ones I manage to hit in a couple of weeks’ time.

Rory

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