IAN LADYMAN: Paul Pogba will never be a great Manchester United player
IAN LADYMAN: Paul Pogba is a seriously good midfielder and has produced the best piece of individual skill of Euro 2020… but he will NEVER be a great Manchester United player and they should cash in on him
- Paul Pogba is a seriously good midfielder and often shows that for France
- But his impact at Manchester United has been limited to handful of big moments
- He will never be a great United player and they should cash in on the Frenchman
- If he was going to shine for his club he would have already done it by now
- Find out the latest Euro 2020 news including fixtures, live action and results here
Arguably the best piece of individual skill of the Euros so far was Paul Pogba’s perfect diagonal pass to Lucas Hernandez in the build-up to the goal that helped France beat Germany.
Only a very good player would consider such a pass and only an even better one would pull it off.
And that’s the thing about Pogba. He is a seriously good player, both technically and in the way he sees pictures and opportunities.
Paul Pogba was superb against Germany and produced best piece of individual skill of Euros
Pogba looks happy for France and so often seems to play well, picking up the man-of-the-match award in their opening Euro 2020 game against Germany
Pogba played very well in that game and often does for France. He scored in the 2018 World Cup final in Moscow.
And all the while supporters of Manchester United must watch and wonder why he has never regularly had this impact for their team.
Pogba has been at United for almost five years. He joined after the last Euros, welcomed to the club by some grand social media extravagance that appeared to suggest the saviour had arrived.
But at Manchester United it has not happened and his stand-out moments have been limited
The problem is that it hasn’t turned out that way. Pogba has had some decent games and a handful of stand-out moments but hasn’t managed to turn around the direction of the club in the way it was hoped. He has not become a player to build a team around.
Not all players can do that, however talented. Some players need to be playing in very good teams to be very good players. Pogba did that at Juventus — alongside Arturo Vidal and Andrea Pirlo — and won some big trophies. In France he plays in a midfield with N’Golo Kante.
At United it’s Fred, Scott McTominay and Nemanja Matic. Pogba has not managed to elevate the levels of those players by example and that has been the disappointing thing.
He has shown he can shine alongside very good players but he seems to rely on that company
When I think of such matters I always think of players like Roy Keane and David Beckham. They played in some brilliant United teams but also some transitional sides that struggled. Even on the bad days, their individual standards of play rarely dropped. Keane and Beckham didn’t need to be surrounded by great players to look like great players.
Pogba is not in this category. He has had the chance to prove himself equal but has not managed it.
Now 28, he may well have a good Euros. He may come home as a winner.
If I were in charge of such things at Manchester United, I would look to cash in on any of that and sell him regardless. If he was going to be a truly great United player he would have done it by now.
If he was going to be a truly great United player Pogba would certainly have done so by now
Patrik Schick is a candidate for breakout star
Big tournaments always throw up the odd random star and Czech forward Patrik Schick is a candidate after two great goals against Scotland and a penalty against Croatia.
Word is that just about every club in the Premier League has looked at him at Bayer Leverkusen over the last 12 months and the unanimous verdict has been ‘too slow’.
We will see if that’s still the take at full-time at Wembley tomorrow night.
Pep’s influence…
Manchester City midfielder Rodri took one for the team as he tripped a breaking Poland player in the very last minute of Spain’s draw in Seville.
They call that a ‘technical foul’. I wonder who taught him to do that…
Ashley Williams has been surprisingly impressive in the BBC studio as a pundit this summer
Ashley Williams impressive in the studio
One of the charms about summer tournaments is that they are splashed all over BBC and ITV. An awful lot of people in Britain don’t have Sky or BT.
As always, the standard of punditry has varied widely. Surprise quality, for example, has come from the BBC’s Welsh pairing of Ashley Williams and Neil Taylor, the former Swansea and Aston Villa full back.
In terms of the hosts, Mark Pougatch and Gabby Logan have been head and shoulders above the rest. Both are time-served journalists so maybe there is something to learn from that.
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