Paul Pogba gave a very detailed, interesting, thought-provoking and in-depth interview with Esquire.
While the Q&A appears in the July/August edition of the magazine, which hits news stands today, it was actually conducted about 72 hours after Islamic terrorist Salman Ramadan Abedi detonated a suicide bomb at Manchester Arena. The blast, at an Ariana Grande concert, killed 23 and injured 250 people.
The interview, conducted the day after United beat Ajax in the Europa League Final in Stockholm, opens by referencing the terror attack and also what Paul Pogba said on the pitch once the match went final:
“We won for Manchester. We played for the people who died.”
The Muslim Frenchman, whose parents emigrated from Africa, also sent a powerful message with this passage below, excerpted from the feature that you can read on Esquire.com
As a Muslim living in Manchester, do you have a message for people living in the city?
“It’s a very difficult moment but you cannot give up. We can’t let them get in our heads — we have to fight for it. Sad things happen in life but you cannot stop living. You cannot kill a human being. To kill a human being… it’s something crazy, so I don’t want to put religion on it. This is not Islam and everybody knows that. I won’t be the only one saying that.”
Paul Pogba has a very large platform, so what he said there is very powerful and up-lifting. It’s words that Islamophobes should read. It’s also a paragraph that should make its way to those who let the threat of terrorism impede them from doing the things we want to do in life.
Pogba is right, once we hold ourselves back from living our lives, the terrorists win.
It’s a great interview, which covers a multitude of topics, both on and off the pitch. There many outstanding passages in it, especially the portion where the world’s most expensive player hits back at critics of both himself and Man United. Check it out.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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