Juventus were expected to terminate the France midfielder’s contract if the original four-year ban was upheld by CAS. Friday’s verdict leaves Juventus waiting for CAS to publish the reasons for their decision, possibly as soon as Monday. Talks with Pogba and his agent Rafaela Pimenta will follow, but a reconciliation is unlikely to be top of the Italian club’s agenda.
Sympathy among the Juventus hierarchy was in understandably short supply. There was already dissatisfaction at his struggle to recover match fitness in his first season. To take nutritional supplements without the club’s knowledge was considered irresponsible in the extreme.
The option of terminating his contract immediately was discussed, but was not possible while he was awaiting the outcome of his appeal to CAS. Instead, he was required to train away from the club’s facilities with his salary reduced to €2,000 a month under the terms of an agreement between Italian clubs and the Italian professional footballers’ union (AIC).
Pogba’s last competitive appearance was nearly 17 months ago. Since rejoining Juventus amid great fanfare in the summer of 2022, on a deal that was initially worth €500,000 per week (£420,000, $550,000), he has started just one match due to a) persistent injury problems, b) a struggle to regain fitness and form and c) the ban that began, initially on a provisional basis, in September 2023.
oooff....
And a bit of background on the 'cause'...
His defence centred on a trip to the United States in November 2022 — during the World Cup in Qatar, which he missed with a knee injury.
During that trip, he visited a wellness clinic in the hope of finding out why he was suffering so many injuries and what kind of action he might be able to take in order to prevent them in future.
A series of blood and biometric tests raised various issues, including a lack of vitamin D. Pogba says the doctor at the clinic, who claimed to have worked with numerous athletes in American sport, prescribed a course of tablets to address his vitamin D deficiency.
Pogba thought little more of it until August 2023, when Italy’s National Anti-Doping Organisation (NADO) selected him for a drugs test after Juventus’s opening game of the Serie A campaign away to Udinese, for which he was an unused substitute.
His test came back positive, as did a “B” sample, with NADO declaring that his sample contained “non-endogenous testosterone metabolites” and that the results were “consistent with the exogenous origin of the target compounds”.
I always find football bans so unbalanced, 4 years for a bit of testosterone in your system, yet you can call a fellow pro a ni@@er, serve a few matches and get welcomed back with open arms. It fairly clear what the priorities are
