Pogba injured and Juve paying for the choices. Agresti’s comment

Almost three hundred days have passed – 292 to be exact – since Paul Pogba played his last game as a starter: it was spring, mid-April, and Manchester United beat Norwich 3-2. Three days later, they sent him inside in the last ten minutes of the match against Liverpool (4-0). Then, nothing: he stopped due to a calf injury, which followed the one to the thigh where he had been out for a couple of months. Then, after moving to Juve, it was the knee that crashed.

The feeling that Pogba has become crystal clear for some years now (the last season in which he played continuously remains that of 2018-19) is very strong. To the point that someone is now questioning the prudence of Juve’s choice, which has staked a lot on him. Easy to talk about now: when the Frenchman returned to black and white, moreover as a free agent, the club’s operation was celebrated everywhere. He would have earned ten million net including bonuses, it’s true, but the benefits of the Growth Decree could be used. A champion of this size, now a rare commodity for our football, deserved an effort.

What happened in Pogba’s first few months at Juve changed the cards on the table and judgments, and not just because Paul didn’t play a single minute. The question has also become another, linked to the choices and behaviors of the player. Above all for the decision he made at the beginning of August, with the knee injury. If he had had surgery immediately, he would probably have missed the World Cup but would have had the joint cleaned out definitively: two and a half months, more or less, and he would have returned to Juve’s disposal. So advised the specialists consulted. But Paul didn’t give up until he found someone who told him what he wanted to hear: the operation isn’t essential, conservative therapy may be sufficient and in this way you’ll be on the field in a few weeks. Pogba thought of himself, of saving the World Cup, not of Juve who had already started paying almost one million a month into his account. In the end he understood that no, that wasn’t the way. And at the beginning of September he underwent surgery, having thrown away a month of Juve (and goodbye to the World Cup, of course).

When Allegri announced yesterday that Pogba has a muscle problem, and that the return is still delayed, he seemed disheartened. In Max’s “maybe in two or three months he’ll be at the top” there is all the discouragement of a coach almost resigned to the idea of ​​not having him for almost the whole season. And while he, Max, is thinking about the technical aspect, it is also appropriate to ask ourselves – who knows if someone in the club is doing it – how it is possible that Juventus should pay the full salary of a player who has decided to postpone surgery without assess what the risk would be to his club’s interests. No one could force him to have surgery, God forbid, but is it right that his choice (legitimate but proved to be completely wrong) should be paid only and entirely by Juve, on the pitch and in the income statement?