Pogba is back and ready to remove the asterisk from his career

There are some footballers who just seem to be incapable of blending into the background and doing things the simple way.

Ronaldinho and Neymar are great examples – showmen first and foremost. There is a hint of that in Rayan Cherki, too, while Mario Balotelli perhaps took that a step too far, though he was one of the great mavericks nonetheless. 

There have been all sorts of entertainers, from the controversial to the creative genius, but there haven’t been many who have been more inextricably blockbuster than Paul Pogba. 

From his meteoric rise at United, to starring at Juventus as a prodigious talent, complete with Puskas-worthy goals, extravagant trims and endless showreels of cross-field passes – it’s as if the phrase ‘no half-measures’ was created with his career in mind.

Then there was the £100million move to United, which speaks for itself, and the fact that his return to Juventus was, for various reasons, so drastically different to expectations; a first season ravaged by injury, before a shock doping ban in his second that ended his career in Turin. 

Pogba has been impossible to remove from the spotlight, and by and large has been able to prove it is justified on the pitch. Even in his 18 months away from the game, the action has still followed in his wake.

The 91-time French international is now nearing a return to football at long last, after reportedly agreeing to a two-year deal with Monaco – French outlet Le Parisien claim there has been a financial sacrifice involved – but he has not been sat idle for 18 months by any stretch. 

Pogba has been putting in the hard yards on the training pitch even without a club, having left Juventus by mutual agreement in November, if his Instagram is anything to go by. 

There aren’t many scrolls that go past without at least one football featuring. In true Pogba fashion, though, some of those clips see him nutmegging Lionel Messi’s bodyguard, or humiliating YouTuber IShowSpeed panna-style, or playing head tennis with NBA star Jimmy Butler… you get the picture. 

He’s been training with Man United’s Kobbie Mainoo and Leny Yoro, and was doing the rounds at the Club World Cup posing with some former team-mates on the books a Boca Juniors. 

But make no mistake, he has been grafting away, and looks as fit as ever, otherwise a team like Monaco wouldn’t be offering a two-year contract to a 32-year-old who hasn’t played a game since September 2023. 

One particular picture on his social media does stand out, though, with Pogba posing with a bizarre array of work-out partners. 

First there’s Argentina and Roma star Paulo Dybala and Brazilian football social media personality Iran Ferreira. But weirdest of all is Donald Trump’s businessman son-in-law Michael Boulos – nope, no idea either.

It’s not all been fun and games with the US President’s wider family unit. Pogba went through a horrific ordeal which has actually gone on for a number of years, but came to a head just before Christmas. 

His brother, Mathias, and five other men – some of whom were friends from childhood – were convicted of attempting to extort the World Cup winner, in what can only be described as a distressing breach of trust and loss of confidence for Pogba. Mathias was sentenced to three years in prison, two of which will be suspended.

Pogba had filed a complaint after he was kidnapped and robbed by two unidentified masked and armed men, who demanded €13million (£10.98m) for ‘protection services’. Five people close to him were said to have ‘meticulously prepared’ a meeting which ended with his kidnapping. 

After the original threat, the group were said to repeatedly intimidate Pogba and claim that he didn’t support them after becoming an international star in order to get him to pay, as per Le Parisien.

Reports in the French media then also revealed how Pogba told investigators that the alleged extortionists were attempting to discredit him by making a series of claims.

This included Mathias claiming Pogba had hired a witch doctor to put a spell on his France team-mate Kylian Mbappe, while he also accused him of having ‘abandoned’ his family. Pogba denied the claims, and during the investigation, it was also revealed he had paid €100,000 (£84,423) to the organised group.

And, after two years of investigations, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that Mathias and the five men would stand trial. 

Mathias – who played for the likes of Crawley, Crewe and Wrexham – was found guilty of ‘organised extortion and attempted extortion’. In addition to the prison time, he had been ordered to pay €20,000 (£16,500).

‘This kind of thing can destroy families, start wars,’ Pogba said later. ‘It made me question everything – fame, football, my purpose.’

In what has been a tricky period, there have still been some releases for a player who has probably not had more then a month or so away from football in 15 years.

There was a brief dip into the world of cinema, playing the role of a youth team coach in the French film Four Zeroes, and he was recently seen at the Cannes film festival with his wife, Zulay, enjoying a night of glitz, glamour, and everything the red carpet brings with it. 

There was also a bizarre reunion with former team-mate Patrice Evra who – a sentence that is scarcely believable – was training for his mixed-martial arts debut, having also hinted at a cage fight with Luis Suarez. 

But don’t be confused, those are the exceptions that seem to prove the rule; Pogba wants nothing more than to be back out on the field, doing what he does best, and his one focus over the last 18 months has been just that. 

He’s done the hard part now, the mental battle. The discipline to handle the setback and put himself into a position where he can now earn his way back into the game, really should not be understated, because there are a lot of players for whom that would have been the end. 

But not Pogba, who will feel he has a lot to prove. The fact that his first gig back could well be at a top-three French club competing in the Champions League tells you all you need to know about his intentions for this next chapter in one of the most colourful and eventful football stories.

He’s won the World Cup, and is arguably the most technically-gifted midfielder of his generation, but you sense that there is still more for him to give on the club scene, and someone like Pogba will not want to end his career with any form of asterisk.