Juventus player and former Manchester United midfielder, Paul Pogba has been handed a four-year ban from football after failing drug test last August.
The 30-year-old Frenchman tested positive for testosterone after Juventus’ first game of the season against Udinese, and was given his hefty punishment by an anti-doping prosecutor’s office in Italy
Pogba turns 31 in March, and such a lengthy ban could well spell the end of his football career.
The France World Cup winner spent the entirety of the Udinese game on the bench, and then came on as a substitute against Bologna and Empoli, but he hasn’t played football since the case became public on September 11.
On September 11, the National Anti-Doping Tribunal released a statement saying: “We announce that, in acceptance of the request proposed by the National Anti-Doping Prosecutor’s Office, we have taken precautionary measures to suspend the athlete: Paul Labile Pogba for the violation of articles 2.1 and 2.2; substance found: Testosterone metabolites of not endogenous (GC/c/IRMS results are compatible with the exogenous origin of the metabolites)”
Pogba’s lawyers had rejected a plea deal and hoped to get their client a lighter sentence after claiming he had accidentally ingested the substance that caused the positive test.
Pogba’s suspension completes a dramatic fall from grace for a player who was once the most expensive footballer in the world.
After coming through United’s academy, Pogba moved to Juventus on a free transfer in 2012 and proceeded to win four straight Serie A titles.
This convinced the Red Devils to bring him back to Old Trafford in 2016 for a world-record fee of £89m, During his six years back in England, Pogba won the Europa League and League Cup with United
Pogba won the World Cup with France two years later, scoring in the final against Croatia,
