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19th August 2016. The Theatre of Dreams; where nearly half a decade or so ago, the Red Devils would request the pleasure of their rivals before gorging on their flesh. Well, now things had, simply put, changed. Nay, they had deteriorated.
United tried to usher in hope in various ways... philosophies, personnel of whom some proved to be more outdated than the first testament. They were also breaking the bank like Robert De Niro from Heat. There were players who took off as soon as they landed simply because it was all getting too much.
Manchester United used to have Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Scholes, Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick, Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand and suddenly, they were looking for a messiah to turn up on a boat. The false idols that did show up took off as soon as they landed and the Glazers ended up stretching their means to make sure the ends meet, at least faintly.
19th August 2016. The prodigious son of Manchester United had come back home. The entire world was now familiar with his travails and exploits. And he was not old enough to even have a beard yet.
Manchester United vs Southampton. If you were watching you'd know what I'm talking about.
He was a different beast altogether that day. Pogba was capering past opposition defenders in ways that left us taking God's name in vain one too many times. He flicked, clipped and dolphin-ed the ball out of blind alleys time and again. He was £89 million worth of supernatural ball playing finesse.
However, the weight of all that dough ensured that Pogba never escaped from under the scanner. When an £89 million kid wins matches for his team, he is merely justifying his price tag. When he is not, he is publicly flogged as though he's been running a blog in the middle east.
Comparisons between the new Pogba and the old Pogba would surface. Detractors would much rather give credit to something in the past than they would honour what's up in the present. But they keep forgetting that Paul Pogba went from that exuberant youth who was left to graze as he wanted, to being the main man at Manchester freaking United.
Care to give a thought to how big of a step up that is?
Paul Pogba battled on and kept creating, chance after chance, lobbing ridiculous through balls into the box only to see them getting scuppered by United's ineptness in front of goal. But something was clearly missing. Forcing Pogba to share the centre of the field with just one teammate was like asking a magician to cut his show short halfway through.
That is why when Nemanja Matic was stolen from Chelsea's books, Jose Mourinho and the Old Trafford faithful felt like they had found the key to unlock Paul Pogba. And it clicked straight away. Pogba was getting involved immensely in United's ventures into the final third and he was scoring and assisting.
However, cracks started to appear and it became apparent that a slow Matic needs Pogba as much as he needs him. Pummelled and bagged on, Pogba finished a decent season condemned with a cross to his back. In a month and a half, he'd be playing for France in the World Cup. But deliverance was yet to come.
May 2016. History has been written. Leicester City are Premier League champions. Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez have stolen the limelight. But it would take the world about 3 more months to realize that they stole the show thanks to a darling faced pocket warrior from Paris who was growing in reputation in the world of football as one of the slickest thieves on the football ground.
If there was a football rolling around, Kante believed it belonged to him. The babyface demeanour works for him that way. He is as stubborn as a mule and staunchly believes that deserts expand the longer his opponents keep the ball; a credo Chelsea decided to adopt for £32 million bankrolled from Russia.
The title-winning mojo did not belong with Mahrez or Vardy. Without their most vital cog, Leicester City's system came pretty close to breaking down. Meanwhile, Chelsea burgeoned. N'Golo Kante, alongside Nemanja Matic, formed the most colossal human roadblock in England since Keano and Scholesy.
There's that joke about Kante which sounds as sweet and as accurate as a hammer striking a nail right on its head.
Whilst 71 per cent of the earth is covered by water the rest is covered by N'Golo Kante.
Kante admirably walks away blushing from the praises that are thrown his way. He is a soft-spoken, smiling little angel who goes to war only to win. It was only fitting that he guided Chelsea to their 5th Premier League title.
The Blues would then ridiculously sell Matic to Manchester United and condemn Kante to several bouts of instability caused by a rotation involving the insipid Bakayoko, Drinkwater and a Fabregas who isn't familiar with the Kante department of ball retrieval.
As a result, Chelsea came to blows throughout the season and was fortunate to end their campaign towing the FA Cup they snatched away from Manchester United.
World Cup was a month and a half away and you couldn't fault Kante for not being in high spirits. He had won 2 back to back titles and suddenly, he did not feel like a champion. Kante was a one-man army.
Ander Herrera, Nemanja Matic and Paul Pogba. On paper, you couldn't ask for a better midfield trifecta than that. But things unfolded differently on the ground, didn't it?
Didier Deschamps, 20 years after lifting the World Cup alongside Zinedine Zidane, had the chance to take a French team replete with blood-curdling individual talent to the pinnacle of success. Up top, they had Antoine Griezmann, Kylian Electricity Mbappe, Olivier Giroud and Ousmane Dembele.
In defence, France had Real Madrid's and Barcelona's rocks- Raphael Varane and Samuel Umtiti.
And in midfield, oh, in midfield... they had N'Golo Kante and Paul Pogba.
Standing at 5 ft 6 in, made entirely out of lungs and concerned only about queering his opponent's pitch, N'Golo Kante was the antithesis to Paul Pogba. But they became the centre-pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, oddly shaped but perfect in tessellation.
Kante would be the collector that roves about sourcing the fuel that kept France's engine, Paul Pogba, whirring.
An uninhibited Paul Pogba is the best thing that France could have hoped for. But how they reached out into Paul's psyche and retrieved the essentials is still baffling to many. The consensus before the tournament was that Pogba should be allowed to relinquish his defensive responsibilities so as to belt out bullets on the other side of the pitch.
But Pogba would much rather be a landmine than a bullet. And there he was in Russia, executing the same defensive duties he half-asses in his club outfit, with aplomb. Instead of being shift slots on the gear stick, they transformed into the lever and France progressed through the columns like a BMW M3 GTR with a need for speed.
Of all the midfields that captivated us in this enthralling edition of the World Cup, it was France's consistency that set them apart. Their forward line had an outing to forget against Australia. No worries though, Pogba and Kante were on call with water and foam to make sure nothing blew up in their faces.
France swedged to keep things at 0-0 against Denmark in the absence of Paul Pogba. Their defence uncharacteristically struggled against a tepid Argentine attack and conceded 3 goals. However, Kante made sure Leo Messi wasn't afforded peace of mind while Pogba kept pinging perfectly weighted through balls into the D owing to the fresh telepathic understanding he had formed with Kylian Mbappe.
Head on over to Whoscored.com and you can see that 'indiscipline' is the only bullet point that shows up under Paul Pogba's weaknesses. But after one viewing of his performances against Uruguay and Belgium, you'd scoff at it. You could even dismiss it. But that was the truth about pre-World Cup Pogba.
But look deeper and you'll find one of the biggest personalities in the world of football getting his act together; humble in his knowledge, receptive to the criticism and introspective in recompensing.
He's only gone and done it, our lad, Paul, hasn't he? Stripped himself down and meticulously stuck the Elastoplast over his wound. And making sure he looked squeaky clean was N'Golo Kante.
Whilst we celebrate the sheer excellence of France's midfield, it would be criminal to leave out the floating Blaise Matuidi a.k.a (in this scenario) Mr. Wolf. If and when Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega left their car's upholstery dripping with blood, Blaise Matuidi was ready with his toolkit to show up and clean up. Matuidi hounds like a pit bull terrier and there's no slipping his curious eye.
While Pogba sacrificed some swagger for resoluteness, he didn't cut down on effectivity. Pogba marauded forward and helped the ball move on with more ease than any other midfielder in the World Cup. He was even better than Kevin De Bruyne at it.
He gained the most number of yards in fast attacks per 90 minutes. He is also responsible for making the most number of passes in the final third at the World Cup. Pogba completed a whopping 78 passes in the final 30 metres of the football pitch.
What else? Paul Pogba won the most number of duels (58) at the World Cup. His partner in crime, N'Golo Kante, made the highest number of recoveries (58). The Chelsea midfielder who would rather die than stop running also made the most number of interceptions in the tournament.
Pogba should have garnered 2 assists against Belgium had Tolisso or Griezmann converted the chances he laid out for them on a silver platter. It was Pogba's absolutely disrespectful long ball that set Mbappe off to win a penalty against a tumbling Marcos Rojo in the round of 16.
Kante reportedly ventured out onto the field for the final with a stomach bug. He didn't look at his best and was withdrawn early in the first half but Kante on his dull days is still good enough to absorb almost all the heat that's sent his way.
Meanwhile, Paul Pogba got busy writing the script which would immortalize him in World Cup folklore. With a volleyed pass that split the Croatian defence like Moses did the red sea, Pogba first left us gasping for breath and then galloped to the edge of the area to finish it off.
All that brouhaha about the haircuts, the dabs and the Instagram snippets which never really made sense at any point, to be honest, evaporated. As Roy Keane, one of Pogba's biggest (yet kind of fair) critic rightly pointed out,
“I don't mind Pogba dancing now. He's entitled to have a dance now he's won the World Cup.
“He can do whatever the hell he wants with his hair.”
The haters have gone hiding. The boy has only gone and won the biggest prize in football and he so admirably earned his way to dabbing with the World Cup in his hand. Paul Pogba is a big personality. He is outspoken and he deserves to be heard, more now than ever before. At 25 years of age, he is already a leader on and off the pitch and also, um, the champion of the world.
As Adil Rami, one of the senior most members of the French squad recently said,
“I can tell you that Paul Pogba, I don’t know how and I don’t know from where, has become a leader. He proved it to us, he showed it.”
“He’s a technical player, he has a lot of talent. He was able to battle defensively. Everyone loves players who do tricks, nutmegs, flicks. I can tell you that Paul, today, became a leader. He’s the one that showed the way.
“He was the strong man of the France team.”
Paul Pogba dabbed with Macron, he dabbed with his mom, he dabbed with the World Cup in his hand and the world, for a change, cheered him on.
On the other hand, there was the ever so adorable N'Golo Kante who is as responsible as any for France's World Cup triumph; so understated and so self-effacing that he was too shy to even ask for his chance to pose with the World Cup trophy that Steven N'Zonzi had to ask the rest of 'em to offer their brave little mascot his time before the ones with the benefit of flash photography.
N'Golo Kante sitting on the ground with the World Cup trophy in front of him has to be the most heartwarming sight of this summer for the true fans of the game.
The mud-slingers will undermine this French team by calling their philosophy of curbing mistakes and enhancing effectivity as 'anti-football'. France were a team that just got better and better as the tournament progressed and the rest could try for as long as they wanted, but this Didier Deschamps side was going to take some beating.
And pulling the strings and plucking the chords were two men... Paul Pogba and N'Golo Kante; two men, so outrageously unlike each other, so different in chassis and like chalk and cheese in character that bobbed and weaved their way past the most formidable units of men to become the power source that would drive Les Bleues farther than their adversaries who, for all their efforts, looked like they had overtaxed their strength just driving up to the gates of glory.
Only Pogba and Kante looked hungry for more.
Now the tables have turned. The onus is on Jose Mourinho to plant this version of Pogba in his yard and pray to good god almighty that he blossoms.
But you and I know that it's not Pogba he has to give a facelift too. If Manchester United's latest high-profile signing Fred can vie with that angel face motor of a human being who terrorizes insurgents at Stamford Bridge, Paul Pogba will take over the freaking world.
