When Paul Pogba opens his Twitter account after a match he must find that his every touch has been Vine’d or GIF’d as a kind of social media catalogue of his Manchester United career.
No player in the history of the game has been placed under as much scrutiny as the Frenchman has been since he made his world record transfer move in the summer.
Indeed, so much is expected of Pogba that his performances aren’t being judged on a game-to-game basis, but rather on the basis of every single touch of the ball he takes. It’s lost on those who ridicule the fact he hasn’t scored in every game he’s played for United so far that it’s completely unreasonable to asses a player using such a yardstick.
What’s more, Pogba has actually settled into his new team rather well. It’s true he has yet to scale the heights he is capable of, but his form is improving, already imposing himself as United’s key creator from midfield. That much was evident against Liverpool earlier this week, conjuring up the visitor’s only real goal scoring chance. It wasn’t Pogba’s fault that Zlatan Ibrahimovic managed to head his inch-perfect cross well wide of the goal, even if Jose Mourinho admitted afterwards that he wanted more “penetration” from him.
In fact, Pogba has arguably been United’s best player, or at least one of their best players, in each of their last three games (scoring the winner for France in Netherlands in between that). It’s starting to become apparent that no matter what the midfielder does he will face intense scrutiny for as long as he is the most expensive player in the game.
Of course, he’s not the first to have felt the weight of a hefty transfer fee around their neck. Some players never find a way to cope with the burden. Fernando Torres, for instance, never escaped the shadow cast over him by the £50 million Chelsea parted with to lure the striker from Liverpool. Every so often Gareth Bale still experiences the erratic wrath of the notoriously hard to please Madrid media, with the Welshman expected to match Cristiano Ronaldo’s level just because he cost as much as him.
Ronaldo, as well as Lionel Messi, can actually be blamed in part for all that Pogba has endured since joining Manchester United. The duo has warped what is expected of the world’s best players. Ronaldo, who smashed the world transfer record by joining Real Madrid for £80 million, in particular has set an unrealistic precedent, meaning any player who costs anywhere near as much will be judged by such a standard. Pogba is already becoming a victim of this.
It might not be until Messi and Ronaldo retire that normal service is resumed and players are once again judged fairly. For now Pogba must find a way to block out the whisperings and mutterings that provide the soundtrack to his every Manchester United appearance. He must focus on what he can control, not what he can’t, and for the most part he appears to be doing so.
United is still a work in progress under Mourinho and Pogba is a component of that. It’s therefore understandable that he has yet to find his best form this season. The system for him to succeed simply isn’t in place. Again, this is where the Messi and Ronaldo paradigm comes into play. Other, more mortal, players need an infrastructure behind them. Pogba is having to make do without that right now, also coming into the 2016-17 campaign without a full pre-season.
The Frenchman might be considered the finest young midfielder in the game right now, but he was never likely to be the sole solution to United’s issues in the centre of the pitch. Anyone who expected otherwise didn’t quite understand what Pogba is as a player. He is not a one-man midfield, but rather the one man to make a midfield.
Pogba finds himself at the centre of a perfect storm precipitated by a common revulsion of the money being recklessly splurged in the transfer market. He is bearing the brunt of the backlash against such modern soccer’s outlandish wealth, with his world record price tag making the midfielder an easy target.
But just because the money splashed on top tier talent is now unreasonable doesn’t mean judgement of said talent should be unreasonable to match. Pogba is among the very best, but some are determined not to give him the chance to show so. Maybe one day the charting of his every touch will ease.
Sportsnet’s Soccer Central podcast (featuring James Sharman, Thomas Dobby, Brendan Dunlop and John Molinaro) takes an in-depth look at the beautiful game and offers timely and thoughtful analysis on the sport’s biggest issues.
