The French midfielder will play his 100th game for the Bianconeri against Olympiakos on Tuesday and he is already suited to be their key man
He sat on the Manchester United bench 17 times, never started, and left the club on a free transfer having played a total of 225 minutes of first-team action. Then 19, Paul Pogba’s departure for Juventus was a statement of ambition. He was worth more than he had been afforded by Sir Alex Ferguson and he knew it.
Two-and-a-half years on, Pogba is set to make his 100th appearance for Juve in Tuesday’s crunch Champions League fixture against Olympiakos. Coming shortly after he signed a new five-year deal with the champions of Italy, it further underlines a magnificent turnaround in the Frenchman’s career.
Undervalued and underused by a club now in dire need of an injection of power and creativity in midfield, he has since made himself indispensable to a Juve side for whom he seemed to be arriving as a back-up. But an engine room which had been lauded for its impact in 2011-12 was quickly improved further by Pogba, who took no time at all to push Claudio Marchisio out of the side.
He developed magnificently alongside the experience of Andrea Pirlo and the excellence of Arturo Vidal, but two years on he has now seemingly surpassed both. While the Italian dips in and out of form in the latter stages of his glittering career, the Chilean has struggled to hit the ground running this season due to injuries and off-field issues.
Meanwhile, Pogba is thriving. After collecting the prestigious Golden Boy award in 2013 for Europe's top under-21 star, he this summer added the title of the World Cup’s best young player. The same performances which saw him receive individual acclaim also led to rumours that Manchester United were keen to spend large sums of money to take him back to Old Trafford. Other big-name clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid also followed him closely.
But Juventus had, naturally, been watching closer than anyone else and agreed to triple his wages in order to tie him to the club for another half-decade. It was due reward for his dazzling displays thus far.
Yet he looks set to get even better in the future, with countryman Zinedine Zidane suggesting that he may become one of the best players in football history.
“What Paul is doing at the age of 21 is huge,” Zidane told L'Equipe recently.
“Maybe we are talking about Pogba a bit too much, but if he can keep up his current development he can become one of the best players ever.”
The 1998 Ballon d’Or winner and three-time Fifa World Player of the Year insists Pogba has the qualities to be a true all-round star.
“For me, he is a combination of Claude Makelele and Patrick Vieira. If I were his coach, I would use him in a slightly more advanced role.
“He has to keep it simple every now and then in order to become more efficient. That way he can develop from a good midfielder into a top player.”
With the right guidance, Pogba appears ready to become whatever he wants to be. Just as he backed himself to leave Manchester United and prosper elsewhere, he can become a true footballing superstar if he puts his mind to it.
He is 99 games into his Juventus career and is already mature and developed enough for the team to be built around him.
Not bad for a player who was a perennial bench-warmer at Old Trafford less than three years ago.
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