Every single day we read the Italian press, there’s something about Paul Pogba in it. Most of the stories come from Turin newspaper Tuttosport, who don’t hide their admiration for the player, and constantly write articles about his possible return to Juventus.
We expected something similar when we saw that Calcio Mercato has a featured story about the Frenchman today, but it turns out that it’s totally the opposite.
They are actually having a rant at him.
The article is called ‘Pogba is just overrated, spoilt and presumptuous: Juve, wrong to turn back to him!’, and is written by Giancarlo Padovan, who used to work for Tuttosport.
It kicks off by justifying this kind of reaction to a recent World Cup winner, with the Calciomercato column saying: ‘It is true that last summer Pogba became world champion with France, but it is equally true that anyone would have become with that team.’
Padovan then gets a little distracted and has a go at ‘mediocre’ coach Didier Deschamps, who is ‘not a genius’.
The story is full of arguments criticising Pogba’s performances and attitude, basically saying he’s not half the player that people think he is. Among the many adjectives, he’s called ‘spoilt and mischievous boy’, and his game has become ‘slow, predictable and pretentious’.
Padovan calls Pogba ‘one of the most overrated players in the world’, who’s ‘not worth the money Man United paid for him’ and the ‘€14m they pay him a year’. He also says ‘José Mourinho was wrong to go for him at all costs, and Juve are wrong to try to get him back’.
He writes that the midfielder ‘loses ball for his arrogance’ whilst trying ‘to show the world he isn’t a normal footballer’.
And on Pogba saying he has to inject fun into his game, Padovan says: ‘And to have fun, probably, he has to do what he wants, without constraints and without rules, except for those applying to others who pay him an enormous amount every week.’
This rant is rare in just how much of an attack in turns into. Paul Pogba has a lot of fans, Giancarlo Padovan is not one of them.
