Manchester United to blame for Paul Pogba’s agent calling the shots

Who is running Manchester United? Where will Paul Pogba be playing football next season?

Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba appears unlikely to be at Old Trafford next season. Picture: Getty Images

Who is running Manchester United? There are days glancing at the headlines when the supporters might wonder if it is Mino Raiola.

Will Erling Haaland sign for the club? Will Paul Pogba turn up to play? You can ask Ole Gunnar Solskjaer but he may end up deferring to other authorities – such as Raiola, the man who started off waiting tables in his father’s restaurant but now guides some of football’s most notable careers.

As the United manager said after Pogba missed yet another match in strange circumstances: “He’s been advised to have an operation by his people and he’ll probably do that.”

Subsequent attempts to clarify that United were part of the process felt rather little and certainly too late.

Where will Pogba be playing football next season? That is probably not a question for Solskjaer or Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, but for Raiola to clarify.

For a club trying to reclaim their grandeur and a manager seeking to exert authority, none of this is a good look, but then what did they expect? Those United fans furiously decrying the agent as an unsettling influence, with ideas far above his station, might care to ask who has done more to create the problem than their own club?

No deal gave Raiola a greater sense of influence or financial independence than taking Pogba back to United in 2016 and pocketing about £41.4m ($78m), which is one of those figures that, however many times you see it written down, you still end up triple-checking through sheer disbelief; a number worth repeating given what it says about the balance of power.

As revealed by the Football Leaks operation, Raiola was paid £22.8m from Juventus’s profit on the deal plus £16.39m in fees by United and a further £2.2m from the buying club on behalf of Pogba for what you might naively imagine would be the only role the agent would actually be needed for; negotiating a basic starting salary of £8.61m a year plus a £3.4m loyalty payment each year (stop laughing) plus image rights.

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Did United think throwing those big fees at Raiola was going to buy long-term loyalty? Favours? Did they trust Raiola was speaking from the heart when, soon after that record-breaking deal, he said that, in signing Pogba, United “sent out a message that this is the biggest club in the world”.

Holding to that view appears to depend on whether you continue doing business with him, and United are doing a lot less of that these days. Aside from Sergio Romero, a reserve goalkeeper, United’s links with the agent have gradually been cut; Henrikh Mkhitaryan did not work out, Romelu Lukaku arrived then changed agents, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic made one of his typically short stops on an eye-watering salary of £19.11m plus goal bonuses.

Most recently, depending on whom you believe, United declined to give Raiola what he wanted to do a deal for Haaland or the player thought he was better off at Borussia Dortmund; either way, Old Trafford is now a graveyard of talent and the ruination of a footballer in the agent’s eyes.

“Now Pogba’s problem is Manchester (United),” Raiola told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica this week. “It is a club out of touch with reality, without a sports project. I would no longer take anyone there. They would even ruin (Diego) Maradona, Pele and (Paolo) Maldini.” So not the biggest club in the world any more.

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Picture: AFP

At the heart of it all is sadness and frustration of seeing a superb footballer’s career lurch fitfully along when Pogba, at 26, should be in his prime.

United have a need for a top midfield player, but how much more they will squeeze out of the French world champion before what seems likely to be an end-of-season exit is questionable, especially now that he is out injured for another month.

In the television studio this week, Rio Ferdinand seemed to harbour the sweet idea that Pogba was somehow completely divorced from Raiola’s outburst, and that this could all be fixed by a few soothing words from the Frenchman.

“If I was someone sitting there advising Paul, I would say, ‘Go on, speak out. You’re your own man. Don’t let your agent speak’,” Ferdinand said. Let us hope for Ferdinand’s sake that he is not holding his breath on that one.

Raiola has to earn all that money somehow while trying to get his client the move to Spain or Italy he craves and one way is saying what Pogba cannot if the player is to maintain the public line that he is being professional, as he did when we sat down for a podcast in June.

He was engaging company but also extremely mindful of what he was going to discuss about United, careful not to cause problems yet equally making no long-term commitments.

So what to do with him? Jose Mourinho tried the stick, stripping Pogba of the vice-captaincy and hastening his own downfall. Solskjaer has tried the carrot and while an ankle injury has interrupted most of the season, that approach does not seem to be bringing any more success.

Club and star player are involved in a delicate dance around each other but as for who is calling the tune, well it hardly sounded like Solskjaer as he talked on New Year’s Day after the defeat away to Arsenal about the player’s latest injury setback only 24 hours after he had said he anticipated Pogba playing some part.

What little was seen of Pogba on his brief comeback with a couple of appearances from the bench was a reminder of just how much United miss his matchwinning calibre, but the club has gone from suggesting privately that no deal will be considered to being open to offers if the price is right as they seek to make some return on the player bought for £89m.

Of course United do not have to sell a player under contract, but do they feel any more in control than the day Raiola brought them the chance to re-sign Pogba and set out what his cut would need to be?

THE TIMES