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H<\/span>ow much can you learn from Paul Pogba\u2019s nine-minute cameo? Perhaps just that he does indeed exist and not only in columns, fitness updates and social media posts. That is where he has existed for the past 26 months, since his final game for Juventus in September 2023: equally at the centre of our gaze and absent from it.<\/p>\n Between his four-year doping ban, reduced to 18 months on appeal, his release from Juventus, and the extortion and kidnapping case that led to his brother being sentenced to three years in prison, his name has been constantly uttered but his face has been rarely seen \u2013 at least not on a football pitch.<\/p>\n His appearance at Roazhon Park on Saturday night was primarily an act of demythification, a moment when he escaped the realm of the collective imagination to become mortal once more. It was also a moment when the angel beat the devil. \u201cIn my head, there was sometimes an angel that said: \u2018You\u2019ll come back,\u2019 and a demon that said: \u2018It\u2019s over,\u2019 but my wife pushed me and I stayed focused. I wanted my kids to see me on the pitch,\u201d said Pogba in July, upon signing a two-year deal at Monaco.<\/p>\n But his arrival at Monaco was not an endpoint in itself. He wanted to make his Monaco and Ligue 1 debut against his formative club, Le Havre, on the first day of the season, but the club\u2019s CEO, Thiago Scuro, provided a dose of realism. The Brazilian suggested he would need a three-month programme before returning to full fitness. And so the idea of Pogba was once again confined to the digital realm: bottled up in press conference responses, clicky updates and an incessant barrage of photos and videos from training \u2013 a reminder that he still exists, as if we could ever forget.<\/p>\n He was expected to return six weeks ago in a match against Angers before a minor quadriceps injury put paid to those plans, and then again against Paris FC at the start of this month, only for an ankle sprain to delay his return once again. \u201cWe are all a little disappointed \u2013 he was ready and wanted to play,\u201d said Monaco manager S\u00e9bastien Pocognoli at the time.<\/p>\n The minor setbacks only amplified the noise before this weekend. Pocognoli had already spent the week fielding Pogba-related questions before Friday\u2019s press conference and it did not buck the trend. After the first six minutes were spent on the topic, Pocognoli reminded the journalists that there were, in fact, other players in his squad, other subjects, a football match even, lest we forget.<\/p>\n <\/span>Paul Pogba waves to the fans at Roazhon Park.<\/span> Photograph: Lou Benoist\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n But the match was a subplot: Pogba\u2019s entrance in the 85th minute of Monaco\u2019s 4-1 defeat by Rennes \u2013 their third in a row in Ligue 1 \u2013 ensured as much. All 18 of Pogba\u2019s touches elicited microscopic inspection because, naturally, there are doubts about his ability to be the player of old. \u201cThe Paul from Manchester United, or from his first stint at Juventus, was a few years ago now. We have to judge him on what he is now, with his baggage but also his age,\u201d said Pocognoli last month. He added that Pogba \u201chad not lost his footballing abilities\u201d or his \u201cvista\u201d and he could still \u201cbring Monaco a lot, if his body allows\u201d.<\/p>\n Nine minutes on a football pitch do not answer those important questions, even if it was immediately apparent that he has not lost that swashbuckling elegance with which he glides across the pitch. His unerring confidence is clearly intact too. \u201cThere is a good God. I believe in myself and my qualities,\u201d said Pogba after the match.<\/p>\n Pocognoli spoke of Pogba\u2019s return \u201cbringing momentum\u201d to his team. It is sorely needed. When Pogba signed in the summer, <\/em>he joined a club that had just finished on the Ligue 1 podium for the second successive season, a team that played attractive football and secured results under Adi H\u00fctter. None of these things is now true. Monaco have dropped to eighth in the table so expectations on Pogba have increased.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/span><\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n He represents something of a saviour figure for Monaco, just as he did when he joined Manchester United for a then-world record fee of \u20ac110m. Players often insist their fees do not matter and that is true of Pogba, whose arrival as a free agent at Monaco does not mean that expectations are lessened. Denis Zakaria and Lamine Camara should be the players who alleviate the reliance on Pogba, but the former is now suspended following a red card in the defeat by Rennes and the latter has only just returned from a lengthy injury layoff.<\/p>\n Pogba will welcome the responsibility as he attempts to return to the France team before next summer\u2019s World Cup. \u201cI\u2019m very far away from that,\u201d admitted Pogba on Saturday night. Didier Deschamps\u2019s decision to recall veterans N\u2019Golo Kant\u00e9 and Florian Thauvin for recent camps is a source of optimism, and Pogba has always curried favour with the France manager. Rennes\u2019 Habib Beye said he had \u201calways watched Pogba with sparkling eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n Under the lights of Roazhon Park, it was clear that Pogba has been elevated to something of a deity. Even in his absence, he was omnipresent; Monaco will hope that he is omnipotent too.<\/p>\n Quick Guide<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Auxerre 0-0 Lyon<\/p>\n Brest 3-2 Metz<\/p>\n Nantes 1-1 Lorient<\/p>\n Toulouse 0-1 Angers<\/p>\n Lille 4-2 Paris FC<\/p>\n Lens 1-0 Strasbourg<\/p>\n Rennes 4-1 Monaco <\/p>\n PSG 3-0 Le Havre <\/p>\n Nice 1-5 Marseille<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n Marseille, who play Newcastle in the Champions League on Tuesday night, spoiled a party at the weekend. Roberto De Zerbi\u2019s side beat local rivals Nice 5-1, not only keeping pressure on leaders PSG, who comfortably beat Le Havre 3-0, but also dampening the atmosphere at the Allianz Riviera, where the home fans\u2019 ultras celebrated their 40th anniversary with impressive pyrotechnic and firework displays. But the Nice players could not channel that energy. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Mason Greenwood (twice), Timothy Weah and Igor Paixao scored for Marseille in what Nice midfielder Sofiane Diop called a \u201cspanking\u201d. While Franck Haise was left bemoaning Nice\u2019s \u201cinsufficiency,\u201d as they slumped to a fourth successive defeat in all competitions, De Zerbi spoke of a \u201cmoral boost\u201d before his team\u2019s must-win game in the Champions League.<\/p>\n Strasbourg, in contrast, will try to forget about this weekend\u2019s action quickly as they prepare to host Crystal Palace in the Conference League on Thursday. They lost 1-0 at high-flying Lens, who sit just two points behind PSG. Liam Rosenior started strikers Emanuel Emegha and Joaqu\u00edn Panichelli together but they created very little of note. Rosenior faces a tricky dilemma. Both players made their international debuts during the recent international break (Emegha for the Netherlands, Panichelli for Argentina) and both seem undroppable \u2013 Emegha has been key to Strasbourg\u2019s recent success and Panichelli went into this weekend as Ligue 1\u2019s top scorer. Their partnership didn\u2019t bear fruit, which gives the manager a difficult decision.<\/p>\n This is an article by Get French Football News<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How much can you learn from Paul Pogba\u2019s nine-minute cameo? Perhaps just that he does indeed exist and not only in columns, fitness updates and social media posts. That is where he has existed for the past 26 months, since his final game for Juventus in September 2023: equally at the centre of our gaze<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[163,1844,7818,5314,973,19815,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-35021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ban","9":"tag-case","10":"tag-footballer","11":"tag-kidnap","12":"tag-paul","13":"tag-pogba","14":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ligue 1 results<\/h4>\n
Talking points<\/h2>\n