After a nightmarish 2022-23 season between injuries and extra-sporting problems, will Paul Pogba once again become the mainstay that Juventus so badly need? His coach does not doubt it for a second, but the observers of the Piedmontese club are more circumspect.
At 30, Pogba has no time to lose: overwhelmed by injuries, he only played ten matches last season, the one that was to mark his big return to Juve, already his club from 2012 to 2016, after six years of ups and downs at Manchester United (2016-22). It was first an injury to the right knee and an operation that kept him away from the field from July 2022 to February 2023 and deprived him of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The 2018 world champion again had to stop for a month in March after a right thigh injury. Finally, as he began to find his bearings and rhythm, the “Pickaxe” injured himself again in mid-May, this time in the left thigh, and had to put an end to a season which had never really started. And it’s not just his physique that faltered: “Off the pitch, it was really difficult for me, what happened was hard especially mentally,” he said at the end of the season. , in reference to the case of attempted extortion in an organized gang targeting him, and in which one of his brothers Mathias is notably involved.
The 2023-24 financial year has not started off on the best footing. He had to skip Juve’s North American tour. It is even rumored that it will need many more weeks to be operational. Wrong, swept Massimiliano Allegri: “Paul is in good spirits, his knee is reacting well. You can’t expect that in twenty days he will be ready to play from the first minute of a match given what he went through last season”, admitted the Italian technician, “but he is so strong and sturdy that having it available for 20-25 minutes is very important”. And to support these words, he lined up Pogba during a friendly match on Wednesday closed to the public, of which Juve widely shared the images, in particular the goal scored by the Frenchman.
There is urgency for the France team too, in view of Euro 2024. His 91st and last selection in Blue dates back to March 2022, a friendly match against South Africa (5-0), in other words an eternity.
