It has been a strange year for Paul Pogba. In April, Pogba’s longtime agent and mentor Mino Raiola passed away. In June, Amazon Prime released The Pogmentary, a film that ignited as much controversy (see its IMdB reviews) as it did cement Pogba’s rep as one of the most unique and outspoken players in football. Then, in July, Pogba returned to the Italian giants Juventus after six seasons at Manchester United—only to suffer a serious knee injury during the club’s summer tour of the United States. In early September, after a slew of non-surgical interventions (and, as it happens, in the middle of this story) Pogba and the club decided he would undergo a knee operation with an unpredictable recovery time, just two months before the start of the World Cup in Qatar, which his national side, France, will begin as defending champions.
But all that is to come when I first meet Pogba on a sunny August day in Turin. Turin is not a city famous for its sunshine; in fact, the Piedmont capital, with its mixture of industrial history, working-class tradition and grey northern climes has always been known for its somewhat austere atmosphere. So maybe it’s coincidence or maybe it’s metaphor that when Pogba and I meet at the Juventus first team’s training ground we’re surrounded by light. The sun is high—and so, all things considered, is the midfielder’s mood.
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“I’ve always been like this, it’s in my nature,” Pogba says. “I’m a positive person. And maybe, at the end of the day, people like positive people.”
Paul Pogba knows Turin well. He lived here from 2012 to 2016, after joining the club from Manchester United as a 19-year-old in perhaps one of football’s most notorious free transfers. It was at Juventus that Pogba grew from promising youngster to global star, playing amid one of the strongest Juventus teams of all time, alongside club legends like Andrea Pirlo, Giorgio Chiellini, and Gianluigi Buffon.
In 2016, Pogba rejoined United for a massive £93 million, then a world record transfer fee. (That move, along with fans’ high hopes anytime he’d return from an injury, birthed the #Pogback hashtag.) Expectations at the club were similarly outsized. But, despite some success—notably winning a Europa League title under Jose Mourinho—a series of unfortunate injuries and an erratic relationship with several coaches slowly dug a rift between Pogba, the club, and its fans. And so, in the end, he decided to return to Juve, once again on a free transfer. “I like to think and say that it was my heart that decided,” he says.
“Maybe it was the right time to come back, too. The last three years in Manchester, I was hampered by injuries—it’s no secret that it didn’t go as planned. If you add the fact that Juve hadn’t won the Scudetto [the Italian title] for two years—I thought it’d be a good challenge for us both. And maybe it was the right time for us to get back together and try to regain our rightful place, both me and Juve. More than anything, to get back to winning.”
Pogba knows that there is a strange symmetry to the move: United-Juve, Juve-United, United-Juve. “I always want to play, and I want to give my best. And deep inside, I know that this jersey is special—it brings out the best of me,” he says. “We built a good history, this team and I, and I never forgot that, even when I left Juve. So for me, coming back is a push, an incentive to do well. I never doubted that this was my place.”
In truth, Pogba returns to Juventus a different player, and a different person. “The first time I was here, I was younger, and I didn’t have the experience I have now,” he says. “I’ve grown up—as a footballer and in my personal life. I have two children, a wife. I won the World Cup with France, the Europa League with United, I played with great players and a great team. I learned a lot there. It was totally different from my previous experience. I had to take on more responsibility than I had at Juve, where I was young and had experienced players beside me."
“Now I look at myself and think that I’ve become like these players—like Pirlo, like Buffon, like Chiellini. And now it's my turn to do for Juve what they did.”
The return seems good for him. He seems happier. At Juve, he has reunited with his former coach Max Allegri (“Even when I was in Manchester we kept in touch and talked a lot,” he says) and with Juventus’s fans. “I’ve never felt love like this, not even at United,” he says.
Even so, doesn’t a player of Pogba’s mercurial talent belong in the Premier League, the strongest league in the world?
“It’s true, but for me the Italian league has always been one of the most difficult—playing football here has never been easy,” he says. “There’s unparalleled economic power in the Premier League right now—it’s easier for clubs to buy the players they want there than it is in Italy. I think that’s the real difference. But if I’m just talking about the game that’s played, Italian football has always been one of the best in the world for me, and it still is, despite everything.”
After our first conversation, I leave Turin with Pogba in a happy mood—looking forward to a swift return to winning ways. It does not go as planned. The following week, Pogba agrees to undergo meniscus surgery on his right knee, leaving him sidelined for the foreseeable future, and putting his place in this month’s Qatar World Cup at risk. At the time of writing, his return date is unknown.
When I catch up with him after the operation, Pogba remains optimistic. “I like to face challenges in football and life, good or not, with positivity and always with a smile,” he says. “My love of football and my desire to play again are like a spring, coiled to push me every day to work hard so that I can come back soon.”
Then, the following week, an even more unexpected and serious twist: Pogba’s elder brother Mathias is among several men arrested for allegedly trying to extort Pogba out millions of pounds, threatening to reveal details about his private life online. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the gang threatened Pogba himself at gunpoint. The details of the story remain unclear. Pogba is unable to talk about the case for legal reasons; when this story went to print he was focused on letting his lawyers deal with it in order to concentrate on football.
In our first conversation in August, I had wondered how an athlete at Pogba’s level—with more than 55 million Instagram followers, constant media controversy—can switch off, and focus on football. “You know, I started playing at a high level very young, so I'm used to dealing with rumours,” he says. “It’s part of the game. As athletes we live with praise and criticism on a weekly basis, knowing that we have to keep the balance and the focus on our work.”
There are voices that you shouldn’t listen to, of course. There are distractions and nasty whispers. But then there are the fans—millions of them in his case—whom Pogba knows are still behind him.
“I thank them all for the messages and support they've shown me on social media and in person. It’s really incredible,” he says. “I promise them that I’ll work hard to get back on the pitch as soon as possible, and help the team get the victories it deserves.” After all, it’s not like Pogba hasn’t come back before.
Photographs by Piotr Niepsuj
Styling by Ramona Tabita
Grooming by Franco Chessa
Producted by by Gloria Gotti and Sofia Vogliazzo