Update: Manager Jose Mourinho confirms that Paul Pogba will play “some minutes” tomorrow night.
“We played against Leicester [in the Community Shield] with players with less training than him and we saw that match [won 2-1] as a way to improve them and accelerate the process.”
“With Paul, it’s a bit the same — not one single minute of any preseason match, but almost two weeks of work with us, sometimes with the group, sometimes separately, and the condition is OK to play some minutes.”
Pogba wasn’t be available in the victorious regular season opener at AFC Bournemouth last Sunday, but he is set to go for tomorrow night, in week two versus Southampton. He obviously won’t play 90 minutes, but he’ll see some action.
“You have to ask the manager but I feel very good and have been training for 10 days. I am OK,” Pogba told the Manchester Evening News on Wednesday.
“I am quite used to this [busy summer]. I played the World Cup two years ago when at Juve and three years ago I was at the Under-20s World Cup as well. So I am OK. It is about your body and I have been training on my holidays.”
Pogba was suspended for the opener, due to his getting booked twice in last season’s Coppa Italia final with Juventus. The ban was upheld by the Premier League.
Given his long holiday to the United States which followed his deep Euro tournament run with France, he would not have been been match fit for this one anyway. Thus even without the suspension, he would have missed this contest.
#Pogback will soon officially begin, as he said in his first interview back at Old Trafford:
“I’m ready to go and work on that and just kill it. I didn’t finish what I started here.”
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.