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As Paul Pogba boarded a plane this past summer, just weeks after reaching the final of the European Championship with the French team , he allowed his mind to drift. He was ostensibly on holiday – a cross-America tour that included stops in New York, Miami, Orlando and LA. ‘Thinking of football’ was the caption he posted to his Instagram as he waited for takeoff, but it was not a return to Turin, where he had just achieved an unprecedented back-to-back double with Juventus, that filled his thoughts. Instead they wandered, back to the damp familiarity of Carrington, a secluded swathe of training pitches just outside Manchester. It was there that he had some of his happiest and most-cherished footballing memories, but also where he experienced the frustration of losing out on opportunities he craved. It was where, four years earlier, he had said his goodbyes to his teammates.
“Destiny” was the word Pogba used to describe his return to Manchester United some weeks after that evening. However, “unfinished business” might have been an equally fitting term. In 2011, due to a perceived lack of first-team chances, Pogba left the club that had brought him from France as a 16-year-old for Italian giants Juventus. And it was there, in Turin, Italy, that Paul Pogba became what he is today: the perfect blend of power and élan – the type which you could conceivably build an entire team around. Which is exactly what Juventus did, making the prodigious talent the heartbeat of a side that won four Scudetto Championships and reached the final of the Champions League in the process.
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Meanwhile in Manchester, a year on from Pogba’s departure from United, Sir Alex Ferguson also decided to depart, calling time on an imperious 27-year reign that saw the club become one of the world’s most successful, both on and off the pitch. Two managers would follow, each faltering in their own way, as they struggled to fill the power vacuum Ferguson left behind. It was a period that delivered relatively little silverware or joy for the club’s supporters, with each loss to a Stoke or a Norwich temporarily dulling the magic of Manchester United, both as a once-indomitable side and as a global brand. Subsequently it was decided in the corridors of power at Old Trafford that Pogba, the prodigal son, would be the answer to the club’s woes – playing a key role in reinvigorating a team that was desperately trying to return to its former glories.
Paul Labile Pogba grew up in Lagny-sur-Marne, a town in the eastern suburbs of Paris, where he enjoyed a carefree childhood in relatively middle-class surroundings. It was also here, in the shadow of the housing estate tower blocks of Residence la Renardiere, that a young Pogba took his first tentative taps of a football. From a young age, his older brothers, Mathias and Florentin – twins, who have both gone on to carve out professional soccer careers – would encourage him to join their games. “They always told me, ‘Play with us, don’t play with the younger ones.’ They made me improve. I think they helped me to be who and where I am,” he says in a twang he quite accurately describes as Franco-Mancunian.
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They would also lend him their old soccer boots as they gradually grew out of them, but it was a pair of adidas Predators that Pogba remembers as his first real pair. “They were the first really technical boots I ever had and it felt so good at the time,” he smiles. Some may draw a lineage from David Beckham, the man who popularized the Predator, and Pogba – after all, both have transcended their sport – are signed to adidas and have pulled on the red of Manchester United. And like Beckham, Pogba is also an uncompromising athlete, but the 23-year-old somehow feels worlds apart from his predecessor. Pogba is a new breed – a millennial footballer built for a millennial generation, and one that feels more comfortable in the company of Atlanta rappers than Girls Aloud.
When HYPEBEAST Magazine met Pogba on an archetypal grey Manchester day, he looks every bit the imposing superstar you would expect, resplendent in pristine sportswear, with one of his trademark avant-garde haircuts, which he seems to switch up each week. But his demeanor is welcoming, his charisma and exuberance noticeable, if only to mask a honed guardedness that would make any PR handler beam with joy. He quickly launches into a conversation about his favorite music artists, rhyming off names like Travis Scott, Future, Gucci Mane and Drake (who he met on a recent visit to the U.S.), before asking if we’ve heard “of MHD, a young French artist from Guinean ancestry?” We haven’t. “He does a kind of music which is called afro-trap, which is great to dance on. I asked him to do an original song for the video of my capsule collection and it’s so sick, you should check it out,” he tells us excitedly.
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It is through this genuine engagement with pop culture that the nuanced charm of Pogba lies. In the past, stars like Messi or Ronaldo derived their fervent followers almost entirely from their on-field exploits – and while Pogba also delivers on this front, he celebrates goals by dabbing, has emojis shaved into the side of his head, and has a wardrobe that consists of A Bathing Ape and Yeezys. When his return to United was announced in early August, it too came in an unconventional form, with a collaborative video made with London-based grime artist and fellow adidas star, Stormzy. And in this sense, he is unlike any of his soccer superstar peers – Paul Pogba is both intriguing and brimming with viral potential at every turn. To the youth, he embodies their interests and relates on a level that few others could without it coming off as awkward.
Today, he is here to discuss another of his extracurricular exploits – his forthcoming collaboration with adidas. Rather than simply releasing a new soccer boot with a colorway exclusive to him, the German sportswear giant has put faith in his star potential, creating a capsule collection that includes T-shirts, sneakers and bomber jackets. There’s also a pair of soccer boots that he has been wearing while playing for Manchester United. “Aren’t black and gold the coolest colors ever?” he chirps – the collection comprises almost exclusively of the two colors.
“I think we were designing the boots like already one week after I had signed with adidas,” he said. “Then we started working on more basic pieces like the T-shirts and went to more complex ones like the bomber jacket. It has been an amazing process, I have so many ideas in my mind and I was driving everybody crazy with a thousand suggestions at every single meeting. I learned to channel my thoughts to be efficient but sometimes at night I would look to the ceiling and think, ‘Hey, what if the logo was like that…’ and text people with my ideas. Actually, I might have woke some people up a fair amount of time now that I think of it,” he laughs.
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And who does he see wearing the finished product? “Everybody,” naturally. “We really tried to create a collection that could appeal to all kinds of people. If you take the bomber jacket for example, I think it would look as cool on an American rapper as on a cool London girl.” For any other soccer player, this all might seem a little bit contrived, but not Pogba, who is as comfortable staring down Juergen Teller as he is any Premier League goalkeeper.
Flashes of promise have punctuated a start to the season best described as a “transitional period” under new manager Jose Mourinho It was Pogba that provided one such moment only a couple of weeks earlier, away to Swansea, as he unleashed an unearthly volley that gracefully nestled in the top corner. With December came more signs of promise and the sense that Manchester United had turned the corner, stringing together a number of impressive wins, each with Pogba at the heart of the midfield.
Which really only leaves one burning question to end our interview on. The source of much speculation, debate and Twitter-frenzy: How does he decide on his next haircut? He laughs, “Ah, that’s the Pogba secret.”
This story was featured as part of HYPEBEAST Magazine Issue 17: The Connection Issue. Now available for purchase online here.
Writer
Calum GordonPhotographer
Lukas Korschan