Pogba admitted he suffered from depression, blamed it on his relationship with Mourinho. Making money doesn’t mean being happy, he says

Paul Pogba was for a time the most expensive player in football history. But even that doesn’t mean instant and guaranteed happiness and trophies. The French midfielder reminisced about the engagement under Jose Mourinho when he was not at his best mentally.

It is August 2016 and Paul Pogba is transferring to Manchester United for an astronomical 105 million euros. A month ago, the Red Devils brought in a new coach, the experienced Jose Mourinho, and believed that this duo would finally return Manchester to the top.

However, a literal war eventually broke out between the two, from which Pogba took depression. Now he looks back on that period in an interview with Le Figaro.

“I suffered from depression in my career. Sometimes you don’t know what it is, you don’t want to see anyone, you just want to be alone. These are clear signs,” Pogba described to journalist Baptiste Desprez the worst period of his career.

“It started when I was playing under José Mourinho at Manchester United. You question yourself, you wonder if everything is your fault because you have never experienced moments like that in your life,” the 29-year-old Frenchman recounted.

What actually happened between Pogba and Mourinho? They had several tense situations between them in 2018, which eventually led to the Portuguese coach taking away Pogba’s position as vice-captain of the team.

“One day I have a great relationship with Jose, everyone can see that. But the next day you don’t know what happened. This is the strange thing about our relationship and I can’t explain it because I don’t know either,” Pogba described at the time.

“I absolutely don’t care what Pogba says,” Mourinho replied to him harshly through the media at the time. “We always try to find solutions to problems, but I can’t find a solution to one. When a player plays, he is happy with the coach, but when he doesn’t come on, suddenly he doesn’t like the coach. There is nothing to be done about it,” Mourinho told beIN Sports.

Pogba added that many elite players suffer from mental problems, they just don’t talk about them. “We earn a lot of money, and honestly, we don’t complain about it, but that doesn’t exclude the fact that we also go through difficult moments like others. Does making money mean you have to be happy? Life isn’t like that. We are not superheroes, we are ordinary people,” the Red Devils midfielder added.

Source: Le Figaro