Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has admitted that he would not be surprised if the club failed to sign Paul Pogba from Juventus this summer.
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According to Sky in Italy, United had an £85m bid for Pogba rejected by Juventus on Tuesday, although Mourinho has since refused to confirm or deny whether the France global is a target.
Meanwhile Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola, who also helped to broker moves for Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to United, suggested there is a way to go on any prospective deal.
Pogba originally joined United as a youngster but left for Juventus in a deal worth less than £1million four years ago after failing to make a first-team start under Sir Alex Ferguson. “You have smoke, you have fire – you used to say something like that, right?”
While Mourinho gave the strongest indication yet of United’s interest in Pogba, the Portuguese manager made it clear that they are keeping all of their options open. If the player doesn’t want to be with us, goodbye – be happy where you want to go. I can not tell you. “I think now I’m just looking past it, I’m not going to look back, I’m just going to look forward now and obviously my leg feels great and I just want to push on in this pre-season and get fully fit”. We know what the balance is and, I repeat, we are not going to be only focusing on one player.
“I need to change the profile of this team in relation to other dynamics and the striker will be the easy one to finish the puzzle”. I never create this kind of situation for him that it is black or white.
With two deals taken care of and another much bigger one seemingly imminent, one could be forgiven for assuming Raiola might sit back and count his money over the rest of the summer. I think it affects the intensity of the game, the pitch is also normally dry even if everybody makes an effort to make the best conditions and try to water before the game and half-time maybe. “We are calm. We have three faces to fill the profile”. The market is already hard.
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It would appear that Paul Pogba’s grand return to Manchester United is now closer to completion than ever.
