The Paul Pogba who returns to Manchester United for the start of the 2018-19 season will be a different Paul Pogba to the one who left for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.World Cups change players, and World Cup wins even more so. For a player who has won international football’s highest team honour, life is never the same again.
Whatever else he goes on to achieve in his career, be it short or long, he advances through it serene in the knowledge that he has already scaled the highest peak in the sport. Team-mates, managers, opponents, fans and the media all look at him differently. He has become a World Cup winner. He has become a part of football history.
By winning the World Cup with France and playing such a pivotal role in their success, Pogba has won a new status for himself that he will never have to relinquish. But the most important change that he underwent in Russia may have actually occurred well before France even got to the final.
The most noticeable difference to the Pogba of last season concerned the way he played. Gone were the showy, superfluous touches with the soles of his feet, the blind-alley dribbles, the overambitious long-range shots. In their place was a new, rigorous commitment to the sort of essential but unglamorous tasks—winning the ball, keeping it simple—that Didier Deschamps has always asked him to focus on.
The statistics tell their own story. Pogba had just seven attempts at goal in the six matches he played in Russia—an average of 1.17 per game. In last season’s Premier League, he shot at goal on average 2.81 times per game. He embarked on only 10 dribbles in Russia, at a rate of 1.67 per match, compared to an average of 3.74 per match in the Premier League.
Pogba made 13 successful tackles at the World Cup, which were only two fewer than N’Golo Kante, registering an average of 2.17 per match compared to 1.22 per game in the Premier League. His interceptions were up as well, from a rate of 0.78 per game in last season’s league campaign to one per match in Russia.
Possession recovered, Pogba did what he does best: driving his team up the pitch with surging runs or, more commonly, quick forward passes. It was his impeccably-weighted through ball that freed Antoine Griezmann to win the penalty that got France’s World Cup up and running in their first game against Australia. It was his tackle and pass to Olivier Giroud that unlocked the door in their 1-0 win over Peru. And in the final, the goal that he scored to put France 3-1 up and break Croatia’s hearts stemmed from his own exquisite, swerved pass to Kylian Mbappe, a sublime half-volley with the outside of the right foot from midway inside his own half that turned defence into attack in the blink of an eye.