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On the eve of the Champions League group stage final at RB Leipzig, Manchester United’s preparations were thrown into chaos by inappropriate but deliberate comments from Paul Pogba’s agent, Mino Raiola.
Raiola said his client’s time at Old Trafford was “over”, overshadowing the Red Devils’ focus on their game in Germany. A day later, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team was expelled from the competition after a 3-2 loss, which saw Pogba as a substitute.
The furor over Pogba and Raiola has continued and United must now regroup before the little matter of Manchester City’s ‘noisy neighbors’ coming to visit Saturday night for the Manchester derby in the Premier League. Here Scott Patterson from United’s fanzine the Republic of Mancunia explains why the club must ditch the midfielder who won the World Cup in France.
Paul Pogba has divided Manchester United’s fan base since before he even returned to the club in the summer of 2016, and many were happy that a player with great potential was wearing the jersey again, while others had not. overcome by choosing to leave. the club first.
Sir Alex Ferguson referred to his agent, the notorious Mino Raiola, as a ‘sack of shit’ and when Pogba joined Juventus he was not at all impressed with the pair.
“I don’t think he showed us any respect,” he said. “To be honest, if they continue like this, I’m pretty happy that he’s away, from me, anyway.”
It’s been almost a decade, but you can imagine Ole Gunnar Solskjaer saying the exact same thing, privately at least, when Pogba finally gets the move he’s been calling for publicly for the past few years.
So many unfair criticisms have been thrown at Pogba, with commentators strangely obsessed with his latest haircut or dance move, but it has been difficult for even his most staunch defender to fight in his corner this week.
Ahead of the biggest days of the season so far, with United facing the Champions League decisive group match against RB Leipzig before taking on rivals Manchester City, Raiola gave another damning interview on his vision of the United and his client’s desire to leave the club. .
The timing could not have been worse. While Solskjaer claims that the decision to leave the midfielder out was a tactical one, it’s easy to see why he felt he couldn’t start someone who made it known that he was no longer committed to the club.
Pogba came off the bench and gave the fans some hope as he found Mason Greenwood in the penalty area to win a penalty before heading the ball into goal to create Konate’s own goal. Would United remain in the Champions League if the Frenchman had played from the beginning?
Pogba shouldn’t be made a scapegoat, as the onus falls on Solskjaer to make the right tactics and the players to stop making amateur-level mistakes, but his lack of commitment was a headache without which the coach could. have done it before the kick. -off.
Within hours of a false story that he had retired from the national team earlier this year was released, Pogba immediately took to social media to correct it. But as has always been the case when Raiola has revealed that the player wants to leave, Pogba’s silence was deafening.
In the past, United fans have somewhat turned a blind eye to the disloyalty of the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and David de Gea, but their incredible contribution to the club, both in times of relative success and failure, meant fanatics. they were desperate to hold onto them.
But what has Pogba done for United so that this behavior should be tolerated? That is not to say that he has been as terrible as some claim, but he has never led the team in the way that many others have before him.
If Pogba didn’t want his paid rep to destabilize the club before a great week, it wouldn’t have happened. The dwindling number of United fans still backing the midfielder has suggested that Raiola is speaking against the player’s wishes, even though Pogba never corrected him, but that’s totally naive.
United cannot keep a player who has placed himself so clearly above the club, choosing the worst possible moment to make his feelings known, no matter how much potential or ability he has.
At this point, it’s not even a question of whether Pogba is right to want to leave or not. He is a World Cup winner who has spent the peak years of his career at a club that is so poorly managed that it does not have the top-tier national trophies that it could have won elsewhere, and won at Juve.
But the way he’s chosen to force his way out, showing no respect for the club that raised him as a teenager and paid a world-record fee to bring him back, makes his place at United untenable, which is apparently exactly what he wants. .
Source: m.allfootballapp.com
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