Souness more ‘lazy’ than Pogba as real reason for post-World Cup Man Utd slump revealed

Will Ford
Graeme Souness on ex-Man Utd man Paul Pogba
Graeme Souness has often criticised Paul Pogba.

Graeme Souness can’t resist a dig at Paul Pogba and his latest nonsense has provided proof that *he’s* the ‘lazy’ one having somehow managed to use the midfielder’s greatest achievement against him.

Occasionally – and we’re talking five or six times a year here – when in need of a soundbite to cut through the inane VAR discussions and flowery Simon Jordan monologues, talkSPORT man of the people Graeme Souness is asked about personal enemy No.1 Paul Pogba.

Frustrations in the midfielder are shared by the majority. Pogba was brilliant for Juventus, thriving on the left of a midfield three under Antonio Conte and then Max Allegri as a box-to-box midfielder with a license that allowed the world to appreciate his extraordinary blend of technical and physical qualities.

A return to Manchester United followed for a world-record fee, but as something of a player out of time he struggled both in a deep role and as a No.10. The 2018 World Cup is the standout anomaly in an otherwise troubled spell that stretches from his return to Old Trafford to now, and that’s the first issue we have with Souness’ neat but entirely flawed rationale for Pogba’s failure to reach his potential.

“The worst thing that happened to him was winning a World Cup, because he could turn and say, ‘I am a World Cup winner’,” Souness said on Monday, having scrambled around for a justification for his aversion to the 30-year-old that a) paints Pogba in a bad light (which is of course the absolute priority) and b) will have the uninformed/those without internet access nodding along to his sage wisdom.

Souness has conveniently forgotten that he was chief among Pogba’s critics before said World Cup.

From the point he returned to United in 2016, Pogba was the bee in the pundit’s bonnet, to the extent where colleagues thought it prudent during the tournament to ask whether he had “warmed” to the midfielder as a result of his stellar displays for the national team.

“Most definitely, yeah,” Souness replied, before predictably focusing on what Pogba had been doing wrong for United rather than what he was doing right for France.

That was watered-down criticism that’s become less and less measured over time, coming to a head in September last year. Souness, buoyed by a room full of like-minded people who had paid to see him at his ranting and raving best, labelled Pogba a “lazy t**t”, presumably to the great amusement of his liquor-fuelled groupies.

“I think at that point, it was him going backwards,” Souness added as an addendum to his fallacious post-World Cup slump suggestion, apparently unaware – or unwilling to accept – that injuries have been by far Pogba’s greatest barrier to subsequent success, rather than some kind of Jay Cartwright ‘completed it, mate’ belief.

He’s had 18 separate injury lay-offs since the 2018 World Cup, missing 151 games, and has started just 51 league games since the summer of 2019. Given anti-doping prosecutors in Italy have requested a maximum four-year ban after he tested positive for DHEA in August, he may conceivably have played his last.

Former Man Utd midfielder Paul Pogba in action for Juventus
Former Man Utd midfielder Paul Pogba in action for Juventus

Other significant excuses for his dip in form include being allegedly kidnapped in Paris by masked men bearing M16 assault rifles in March 2022, four days after being burgled with his two young children in the house, before his elder brother Mathias released a video that summer accusing Pogba of having employed a marabout – a west African holy man – to place a curse on Kylian Mbappe.

Pogba has been fighting personal and public demons since the 2018 World Cup, and while Souness would likely question the injuries with raised eyebrows and a knowing look to camera, and give a similar response to the other viable caveats like a teacher at parents evening saying “trouble just seems to follow him, doesn’t it?”, they are a much more likely combination of contributing factors than Souness’ baseless claim which essentially boils down once again, to Pogba being a “lazy” good-for-nothing.

But there’s much less proof of Pogba being lazy than Souness, who almost deserves praise for successfully using Pogba’s greatest achievement of winning a World Cup against him in perhaps the clearest indication yet of his one-sided vendetta, after failing to do the merest bit of research into the actual reasons for Pogba’s struggles, and even more incredibly – in a misstep that should have prevented the nonsense spewing from his mouth before we all had to endure it – failing to remember when he first started to publicly admonish him.