After the revelations of franceinfo on the content of Paul Pogba’s second hearing, the case “has an obvious sporting impact”reacts Sunday, September 4 on franceinfo Sébastien Tarago, editor-in-chief of the Investigation Team, the editorial magazine of the L’Équipe channel.
franceinfo: The security guard of the France team was heard in this case, does that mean that this story goes beyond the simple case of Paul Pogba?
Sebastien Tarago: The security guard you are talking about is someone quite close to the players, so he could have been heard for a whole bunch of reasons. But of course it goes beyond the legal framework, it has an obvious sporting impact. Already, for Paul Pogba, because when your family is torn apart, you cannot escape unscathed. It’s no coincidence that he gets injured all the time in my opinion. And then there is the unknown of this video or this audio message concerning Kylian Mbappé: if it ever comes out, then it’s a tsunami in the France team and I don’t see how he could play with Mbappé.
It’s still a huge blow for Didier Deschamps, a few months before the World Cup, how can he manage this affair?
It is not proven that this video or this audio exists, so we will be careful. Afterwards, there are no incredible tensions between Pogba and Mbappé but it’s not mad love either. When Mbappé arrived in the France team and they became world champions, he took all the light and it was not always well experienced. But Pogba is someone who is quite clever in his relationships with others so there was no rift between Pogba and Mbappé. it was much more tense between Mbappé and Griezmann for example.
Do you think Pogba will be in Qatar?
He is currently injured. He could have had a fairly heavy operation which would have prevented him from playing in the World Cup, he chose to take a slightly more risky option to play it. We have a total unknown, because he will not be on the pitch before the end of September. The good news for Didier Deschamps is that he won’t be ready for the next rally in three weeks. So the question of Pogba’s summons or not will not arise. But afterwards, if Pogba is in good shape, if no video or audio comes out, if no police investigation makes it possible to establish that there was a request for maraboutage from Mbappé, I think he will be in the group. It would be very difficult to dismiss him, knowing that he is a very important element for Didier Deschamps [l’entraîneur donnera la formation définitive de son groupe pour le Mondial en novembre].