Things we learned from the Paul Pogba UTD Podcast

WHY I LEFT UNITED

The World Cup winner confirmed he decided his future lay elsewhere when he was left on the bench for the Premier League defeat to Blackburn in 2011. “It was a very difficult decision for me, with the manager as well and everything with the contract,” he revealed. “It wasn’t the contract but more like the trust with the manager. Obviously, the manager, for me, is still the best manager in history. When they asked me to sign the contract, if I didn’t sign, a lot of things happened. I didn’t train, I went back to training by myself and stuff like this.

“It made me a bit angry and was nothing about the money. It’s just about you’re a player, we believe in you, you believe in you and, me, I just want to play football. That is all I want. I want to play. When I had, like I’ve said before, the chance to play or to come on in this game against Blackburn, that’s when really I had heartbreak. There was no midfield here – people were injured, [Paul] Scholes wasn’t there, I think he’d retired already and it was before he came back. Rafael played in midfield with Ji-sung Park and I didn’t come on in this game. We lost the game. I was on the bench warming up and I thought I would come on and it was a big opportunity for me. I didn’t and things happen. The manager has a choice in everything but that day is when I had my heart broken. I told Pat [Evra] that was the chance, I’d been training with him and he’d been talking to me and saying I would have a chance. But that happened, I didn’t play and I was kind of upset.

“So I went to Juventus, which was a hard decision for me. Hard because it was going to another club as well where I was obviously not as one of the starting XI but I’ve got to come as a young player. A young, talented player and you have to show yourself again. I went and it was a big challenge for me. I said: ‘Go for it, no problem. I want to show I am ready to play for the team’.”