THE POGBA SAGA: The End To This Summer’s Longest Transfer Story
By William Okafor-Oregan
£89 million? Am I hearing this
correctly? They paid that much…for Paul Pogba? That’s as great a joke if I’ve ever
heard one.
photo credit: www.skysports.com
Paul Pogba has now completed his
world-record transfer to Man United a few days ago and I want to cover how
exactly this jaw-dropping deal took place.
It had been said on 4th
August through Daily Record Sport among over sports news publications, that
Manchester had ‘finalised’ a
world-record transfer deal to bring the ‘one that got away’, Paul Pogba, back
to his first home in Old Trafford. Or, that is what had been said every other
day for the past five or so weeks at least.
Through close sources coming from both
Man United as well as Juventus, the reported terms of the transfer were already
agreed upon the day before that. Juventus had been asking for an eye-watering £108.9million
for the France international, as this would be split into a £83.8m payment to
the Italian club. This would include an additional £25.1m that covers a 30%
sell-on clause owed to Mino Raiola, who is Pogba's agent, as stated by Daily
Record Sport.
At that point, any football fan has to
ask themselves: When is anything these days a ‘done deal’. You couldn’t
possibly keep count of every time you had heard Pogba, who has been virtually
chased after by every one of Europe’s top clubs with deep enough pockets. This
being just in the past couple of seasons anyway.
photo credit: skysports.com
At
Juventus, he had flourished into a young and very capable midfielder who had
already won four consecutive Serie A titles in his four seasons at the club
since joining in 2012. That is exactly, joining from Man United in 2012; for a
laughable £800 000 at the tender age of 19 years. Including being one of the
key players that helped his team to being on the verge winning the 2015
Champions League trophy. His future was so, so bright at Juve, why on Earth
would he leave?
-Money. With the
much-spoken-about £5 billion television rights deal that the Premier League had
sold to BT Sport and Sky Sport that begins in the upcoming 2016-17 season; all
top division clubs have had a massive influx of cash in their bank accounts.
-and they’re all more
than ready to splash the cash on wages too.
Of course you’ve got
your typical selective approach from managers like Arsene Wenger, where you
carefully watch all your potential targets get fed up of being linked with
Arsenal for too long and then end up elsewhere. But not Mourinho. This summer
as he carefully It is understood that the drawn-out nature of Pogba's switch
from Serie A to the Premier League - and the immense media coverage it has
elicited.
As the vast majority
will know due to the heavily drawn-out media coverage of this transfer saga,
new United manager Jose Mourinho had
profiled a midfielder such as Pogba and soon made him his number one target
this summer. Without actually telling the media it was HIM specifically he
wished to
Originally, the idea
of Pogba returning for this amount of money seemed amusing especially when he
was originally in their academy as a youngster in the first place. But his
rapid and mature development into European football’s hottest midfield
properties is exactly why Manchester United had been so long-linked with him
this summer.
photo credit: newsrupublica.com
He serves as the
answer to the fans’ desperate desire for world-class dynamism to be added to
the centre of the pitch. The 23-year-old is above and beyond highly rated and
although the only had a sniff of premier league opportunities the first time
round at United, he looks to, maybe just maybe, return as the last piece of the
puzzle to Mourinho’s plans.
With Pogba, who has
secured his eye-brow raising return to the club he escaped 4 years ago, United
have made the biggest statement that they are ready to take the Premier League
by storm this new season. This transfer follows the additions of global superstar
Zlatan Ibrahimovic as well as Henrikh Mkhitaryan from Dortmund and Eric Bailly
from Villareal for what is a combined £55 million for the trio.
That is of course, if
they don’t all write their names among the long list of expensive flops of English
football.
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