Pogba banned 4 years for doping
Juventus midfielder in hot water
Pogba banned 4 years for doping. Juventus announced on Thursday that France’s Paul Pogba, a star player, has been banned from football for four years by Italy’s anti-doping tribunal due to testing positive for testosterone in August of last year. The club stated that they had received notification of the decision against the World Cup-winning 30-year-old, who had been provisionally suspended in September. When contacted by AFP, Italy’s anti-doping body did not respond promptly. According to a source close to Pogba, he plans to challenge the decision, which may result in an early end to his career. Pogba will be unable to play again until the 2027/28 season, at which point he will be 34 years old.
🚨🇫🇷 BREAKING: Paul Pogba has been banned from football for four years due to doping. pic.twitter.com/1BsdRmijOq
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) February 29, 2024
Test was confirmed
Prosecutors in charge of anti-doping measures had requested that the former Manchester United midfielder be banned for four years after he tested positive for a banned substance following Juventus’s first game of the Italian Serie A season against Udinese on August 20. Despite being an unused substitute, a month later, a B sample confirmed the presence of testosterone, and he has been provisionally suspended since then.
Representatives of Pogba stated that the testosterone came from a food supplement that was prescribed by a doctor he consulted in the United States. If Pogba could prove that he was not at fault, the ban could have been limited to two years, or even just a few months if the use of the substance took place “out of competition and (was) not related to his level of performance”.
Key member of France’s World Cup Team
Pogba, who returned to Juventus for a second spell in 2022 after six years at United, was a key member of the France team that won the World Cup in Russia in 2018, and he even scored in the final against Croatia. His positive doping test came as he was trying to put behind him a difficult first season back at Juve, in which he struggled with fitness problems and made just 10 appearances. He missed France’s defense of the World Cup in Qatar due to injury.
He made two substitute appearances for Juventus at the start of this campaign before being suspended.
Extortion attempt
Pogba, who started his career as a youth player at Le Havre, faced off-field issues recently. In March 2022, there was a break-in at his home in the Paris suburbs, and an investigation is ongoing into an extortion attempt against him. The two intruders held Pogba against his will and demanded a sum of 13 million euros ($14.1 million at today’s rates). Pogba’s older brother Mathias, along with childhood friends of the family, is one of the suspects involved in the case.
Pogba has a contract with Juventus that runs until 2026 and is worth a reported eight million euros ($8.7 million) per season. However, since the announcement of his positive COVID-19 test, he has been unable to train, and Juve has suspended payment of his salary. In his earlier stint in England, Pogba made only a few appearances before becoming a star at Juventus from 2012 to 2016.
During that time, he won four consecutive Serie A titles and played in the Juventus side that lost to Barcelona in the 2015 Champions League final. Pogba returned to Manchester United in 2016 for a world-record fee of 105 million euros. Under the management of Jose Mourinho, he won the Europa League and League Cup in his first season back. With 91 caps for France, Pogba played on the team that reached the final of Euro 2016 and two years later, lifted the World Cup trophy.