Will we see Paul Pogba again with the blue tunic one day? Although it is still too early to be able to say so, the question is legitimately raised. And Didier Deschamps himself left hope intact. “There is this light that comes on again,” greeted France team coach Didier Deschamps on Monday regarding the reduction of the player’s doping suspension from four years to 18 months.
“I spoke to him for quite a long time on the phone, as during this whole period which was very complicated for him,” said the coach about Pogba in an interview for the FFF, carried out in Clairefontaine this Monday on the occasion of the gathering of the French team. Deschamps spoke of “the injuries, plus the private problems he had (a case of blackmail against him involving in particular one of his brothers), plus this suspension.
“He will have stages to go through, but it is excellent news, he will be able to play again from March,” added the coach who has always maintained a relationship of trust with his player.
“La Pioche”, 91 caps and 11 goals in Blue, can hope to return to the French team in 2025, with which he was world champion in 2018.
Pogba, still under contract with Juventus Turin where he should not stay, had undergone a positive doping test for dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), for which he always pleaded accidental contamination via a food supplement prescribed by a doctor consulted in the States -United.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reduced his sentence to 18 months. “It still remains a sanction which is heavy, less heavy”, concludes Deschamps, but Pogba “knows that in March 2025, he will become a player again and as he loves football and playing so much, it is excellent news for him “.
This Monday, the CAS justified its decision to reduce the suspension by explaining, in particular, that “the ingestion of DHEA was not intentional and was the result of taking a food supplement prescribed by a doctor in Florida, who had declared to him treating several high-profile American and international athletes, who was knowledgeable and would take into account Mr. Pogba’s anti-doping obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code.”