Pogba explains injury frustration

Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba has explained the details behind his injury problems this season, in an exclusive interview for the club's official podcast.

The Frenchman sparkled in the campaign-opening win over Chelsea but was injured before the month was out, during the draw at Southampton.

It was nearly a month before he returned, in the Carabao Cup win over Rochdale at Old Trafford, but he was sidelined again after the next Premier League fixture, against Arsenal on 30 September.

Pogba looked back to his best when reappearing against Watford and Newcastle United during the festive period, only for an operation to put paid to his involvement before the current enforced break from football in general.

Frustratingly for the World Cup winner, he was on the brink of returning to the fold at the time of the Premier League being halted, and would surely have been back playing by now.

“I'm already training and touching the ball,” he told podcast hosts Sam Homewood, Helen Evans and David May, in an episode that was recorded last month and is to be broadcast in full on Monday evening.

“I've been frustrated, a long time ago. Now I'm almost there, so I'm just thinking about getting back and training fully with the team and everything. You think bad but I've never had something like this in my career, so I always take it in a good way. It makes me more hungry to come back and do well. And, yeah, it just shows me as well how much I love football.

“You have to be very patient because, well my injury, I don’t know if people really know what happened,” he explained. “So I had a foot injury, which came in the game against Southampton. It was early this season and so I carried this for a long time, training and trying to be playing with it. After I stopped, I found I had a fracture.

”I had a cast on it, a plaster-cast, so it went very well but too well. The bone got bigger and so, when I came back again, I played those two games against Watford and Newcastle, I could feel something again. So I had to have an operation and now here I am. I don’t feel anything and, hopefully, I’ll be back very soon.“

Pogba was asked if he misses the matchday routine, such as staying at the hotel with his colleagues, and expressed his determination to get out on the field again. Hopefully, that will be when sport can resume after the current lockdown.

“To be honest, yeah,” he replied. “I don’t even know how it feels like any more. I can’t wait to have this feeling again. I miss it because that’s my job, to play football. I really enjoy playing football.”