Paul Pogba's Journey: From Suspension to a New Beginning at Monaco
Paul Pogba spent nearly two years staring at football from the outside. Now he says he sees everything differently.
The former Manchester United and Juventus midfielder has spoken with striking honesty about the doping ban that stripped him of the game he loves, left him training alone, and forced him to confront how quickly a glittering career can be taken away.
From four years to 18 months
Pogba was hit with a provisional suspension after a random test following Juventus’ opening game of the 2023-24 season. The verdict that followed was brutal: a four-year ban, a sentence that looked like the end of his time at the top level.
An appeal cut that punishment to 18 months in October. Long enough to erase his rhythm. Long enough to question his future. But not long enough to kill his ambition.
Now 32, Pogba has restarted his career at Monaco, and on the Rio Ferdinand Presents podcast he made it clear he is treating this return as a second life in football.
“I’m grateful to be back and play football again, after everything that happened,” he said. “I see football totally different. I enjoy myself. I want to enjoy it.”
Locked out of his own club
The ban did not just keep Pogba off the pitch. It kept him out of the building.
He remained in Italy, stayed close to Juventus, but the doors at the training ground and stadium were effectively shut in his face. For a World Cup winner, a player used to being the centre of attention, that isolation cut deep.
“I know I’ve been out. I’ve been out for two years,” he said. “I’ve been watching the games on TV. I’ve been staying at Juventus in Italy and I wasn’t even allowed to go inside.
“I was watching the stadium like this every day with my kids telling me, ‘Papi, when are you going to go to the game?’”
He could train, but only on his own. No rondos. No small-sided games. No contact. No rhythm.
“I wasn’t allowed to play training matches,” he explained. “I was allowed to train, but I wasn’t allowed to play training matches to stay sharp, to be ready for when I came back.
“I wasn’t even allowed in training to go there. I had to train in my house or find somewhere to train. Is it normal?”
For a player whose game has always relied on touch, timing and instinct, the enforced solitude was as damaging as any injury.
Reputation on the line
Suspensions end. Stigma lingers.
Pogba admits the most painful part of the saga was the way people looked at him – not as a midfielder with a case to fight, but as a cheat.
“I think that’s one of the things that got me most,” he said. The accusation cut across everything he had built: titles at Juventus, a world-record move to Manchester United, a World Cup with France.
Yet he insists the ordeal has hardened him, reshaped him, and sharpened his view of the world around him.
“It made me a better, like, more experienced person. A better person also,” he said. “And to be careful, not to trust everybody, you know, and that’s it. I mean, this is the way of life. This is part of my story.”
A new role in Monaco
That story has now moved to the south of France. Monaco offers Pogba something he has never truly had before: the role of elder statesman.
Once the prodigy in a dressing room of stars, he now walks into a young squad as one of the senior figures, a player expected to guide as much as entertain.
“I want to now arrive at Monaco with a young team,” he said. “I’m one of the oldest, with the experience to help also the team and also to enjoy myself, you know.
“What are we going to change? We cannot change. The past is gone. We can only live the moment.”
The words are simple. The weight behind them is not. Pogba has lost two prime years of his career. He has watched his name dragged through a storm. He has heard his children ask why their father is not on the pitch.
Now he has his answer: get back on it, and make whatever is left count.
