Would Jack Charlton have picked Paul Pogba in his starting XI?

Roy Curtis

Would Paul Pogba have been the kind of player Jack Charlton would have selected in his starting team?

July 14 2020 03:22 PM

A QUESTION it is - sadly - too late to present to Jack Charlton rolled across the Old Trafford turf on Monday night as Paul Pogba again submitted to infuriating self-indulgence.

It is the one that asks what the old pitman, a manager who worshipped at the altar of no-frills pragmatism, would make of the Premier League’s ultimate luxury footballer.

Or, to distil the inquiry down to its essence: Would Jack pick Pogba in his Manchester United starting XI?

The suspicion here is that if Charlton was fishing for glory from the Theatre of Dreams dugout rather than casting his rod by the great riverbank in the sky, Pogba would long ago have been tossed back into the water like a puny minnow.

The likelihood of a jarring conclusion to any professional relationship between this disparate pair of World Cup winners would hardly be mitigated by the myth of all-time greatness which absurdly follows the Frenchman.

As Ireland’s commander-in-chief, Charlton thought nothing of evicting Liam Brady, Pogba’s lyrical predecessor in the Number Ten shirt of the Serie A aristocrats, Juventus.

That the Dubliner was a generational talent, as natural born a game-changer as Irish football has known, did not save him from the cold house of the Englishman’s affections.

Charlton’s expedient, high-pressing, put ‘em under pressure gospel simply had no place for the elegant singsong creativity Brady could summon from that dulcet left foot.

Jack valued industry ahead of imagination, placed collective grit a thousand rungs above the kind of showmanship that is one of Pogba’s less appealing calling cards.

It is true that his post-lockdown alliance with Bruno Fernandes has been central to United’s summer resurgence.

Pogba has penthouse level balance and poise. He can summon the kind of defence splitting pass or eye-catching strike that is beyond the repertoire of most of his peers.

But everything we know about Charlton says that the debit side of the Pogba ledger would madden him and compel him to cull United's alpha male.

At the very least, the manager would deliver the £89m midfielder an ultimatum: Shed the peacock plumage and become more serious minded about the game.

Jack could not dispute Pogba’s athleticism or the evidence of the highest gifts of vision or touch.

But the 27-year-old’s flamboyant conceits, his indulgence of ego would have felt like a rebuke to Charlton’s deeply-held philosophy on how the game ought to be played.

Pogba’s surrender to individualism, the gambler’s instinct which informs so much of his defensive risk-taking would render Jack’s famously ruddy cheeks beetroot with rage.

Twice against Southampton, as against Aston Villa days earlier, Pogba’s ostentation saw him concede possession at the heart of David De Gea’s red zone.

Where Villa hit the woodwork from the resultant opportunity, Southampton stole an early lead.

Or rather, they had it gift-wrapped and handed to them by Pogba.

The fear is that two points United would ultimately drop might sabotage momentum that was building toward something exceptional.

They leave a team that had been powering into a Top Four position on cruise control teetering closer to the Champions League brink.

If Pogba’s mistake was not entirely to blame – he had been substituted long before Michael Obafemi’s 96^th minute Southampton equaliser – it still increases the fear of a devastating £200m European hole opening in Old Trafford’s budget.

The electrifying form of Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial, Mason Greenwood, Fernandes and, yes, at times, Pogba since the restart has triggered authentic hopes of the long-awaited post-Ferguson United dawn.

Yet, doubts persist as to whether Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can entirely trust Pogba to deliver the consistent leadership required to elevate United onto Liverpool’s shirttails.

Remember. Pogba hardly played before lockdown, a time when he did nothing to quell the swirling and unsettling transfer talk around him.

When Jurgen Klopp was confronted by Phillipe Coutinho’s similarly infantile pout, he offloaded the player despite the Brazilian’s reputation as Liverpool’s alchemist-in-chief.

Klopp trusted his instinct, reinvesting the massive financial bounty from Barcelona to secure the last two pieces of the title-winning jigsaw, Virgil van Dijk and Allison.

It is easy to imagine Charlton weighing Pogba’s thrilling pyrotechnic incisions against all those infuriating acts of self-harm and deciding there was only one course of action.

Maybe Jack wouldn’t go as far as Gary Lineker who, years ago, asked his Twitter audience if Pogba was the world’s most overrated player.

But if Charlton, the forever practical and beloved old flat-cap, was still with us, it is hard to imagine any get out of jail card Pogba could present on this Bastille Day that would save him from the Old Trafford guillotine.