2023-09-11 23:03:29
Trouble flies in a squadron above Pogba. Juventus Turin’s French international Paul Pogba has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for testosterone, the Italian Anti-Doping Agency (Nado) announced on Monday. According to the Italian press, which revealed the information, Pogba was checked on August 20 after the match between Udinese and Juventus, counting for the first day of the Italian Championship.
The bomb first came from the Italian press this Monday, early in the evening: Paul Pogba would have tested positive for testosterone, a doping substance among the most often detected and having already caused a scandal in cycling or athletics . A little later, the National Anti-Doping Tribunal informed that in accordance with the recommendation of the National Anti-Doping Prosecutor, it had pronounced the provisional suspension of Paul Labile Pogba. A sanction pronounced for “violation of articles 2.1 and 2.2 for the presence of the following prohibited substances: testosterone metabolites”.
According to Italian media, if Paul Pogba fails to justify “contamination or involuntary ingestion”, the heaviest penalty for him could be up to 4 years of suspension. In a very short press release, Juventus Turin clarified that it reserved “the right to evaluate the next procedural steps”. A new episode of a season, who was just returning from injury after a nightmarish 2022-2023 season. And which obviously raises the question of his future at Juventus, but also in the French team. According to our information, the Blues staff would not have been warned in advance of this positive test of their 2018 world champion, and would have discovered the information through the press just before today’s training in Dortmund.
Monday evening, his lawyer Rafaela Pimenta explained to Le Parisien to wait for “the counter-analyses”. “We cannot have an opinion before the results. What is certain is that Paul Pogba never wanted to break the rules.”
Repeated injuries, a missed World Cup
Everything is going well at the start of July 2022, when Paul Pogba returns to Juventus, all smiles and with the number 10 on his back. The “Pickaxe” turned a not always happy page with Manchester United and made a long-awaited return to Serie A, where the “Old Lady” greatly needed his services. The meeting immediately turned sour: the midfielder injured his knee in training, after having already missed part of the Red Devils’ end-of-season campaign in England.
From there, it’s very simple: the native of Lagny-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne) will not see the color of a football field again before February 2023. In total, that’s more than 300 days of unavailability and four consecutive injuries under the Bianconero jersey which handicap the Frenchman. Above all, despite infinite hopes and a meniscus operation supposed to relieve him, Pogba had to give up the World Cup in Qatar and watch, from afar, his teammates reach a second consecutive final.
In all last season, Paul Pogba only participated in 10 short matches (161 minutes) and has not worn the blue jersey since March 2022. A “cursed” season, in the words of his coach Max Allegri. His start to the season leaves some room for optimism, as he featured in two of the first three Serie A games of the year for Juve (52 minutes in total) and despite a recent thigh injury, the Last physical exams were reassuring.
“The Pogba affair”
At the same time, Paul Pogba is undergoing a legal case against a backdrop of family heartbreak. A case with multiple drawers and twists and turns which began with a lunar video posted at the end of August 2022 on social networks by Mathias Pogba, Paul’s older brother. A video which had the effect of falling dominoes: we subsequently learned that the French international had filed a complaint in mid-July in Italy, upon his arrival at Juventus, to denounce an attempt to extortion to which he has allegedly been subjected since March.
Mathias Pogba (right, here on the evening of the 2018 world title), the brother of the French international, was released in December 2022. LP/Arnaud Journois
He implicates his big brother, who will be incarcerated in September as part of a long and nebulous investigation, revealing a network of violence and intimidation in the player’s entourage. He was released from prison last December, placed under judicial supervision with a ban on contact with his mother and his brother Paul as well as the protagonists in the case.
“When there is money, you have to be careful,” he declared in an interview published this Monday with d’Al-Jazeera and published a few hours before the positive control. Money changes people. It can break up a family. He can create a war. Sometimes I was alone and I said to myself: I don’t want to have any more money. I don’t want to play anymore. I just want to be with normal people, so they love me for me, not for the fame, not for the money. Sometimes it’s difficult. In life, you have to go through that. This will only make me stronger. »
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