Paul Pogba, the perpetual wanderer: what exactly is his problem? | Daniel Taylor

He returned to Manchester United as the league’s most expensive player and now is talking about Barcelona, having done little to justify the fee. Where is the professional pride?

In the main entrance to the Cavée Verte academy, among the trophies won by the youth teams of Le Havre, there is a wall lined with photographs of some of the big names who have passed through these doors. There are about 30 of them in total, all wearing the light and navy blue of Les ciel et marine. Or almost all, anyway. The picture of Paul Pogba on this wall of legends is an action shot from a game for France. “He didn’t stay long enough for us to have photos of him in the club shirt,” an employee explains, almost apologetically, in the biography Pogba, written by Luca Caioli and Cyril Collot.

That’s often the way with Pogba. US Torcy’s website used to have its own gallery and, for reasons not fully explained, Pogba was apparently left off. This was Pogba’s club, briefly, on the outskirts of Paris, when he was starting to be noticed as a teenager. Then, a few months later, he was gone, upgrading to Le Havre. “We weren’t necessarily surprised,” explains the former president, Jean-Pierre Damont, “but a bit disappointed to have found out after the fact.”

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