Paul Pogba handed four-year ban for doping

The 'Repubblica' newspaper reports that Paul Pogba has been banned for four years for the doping case that has been putting his career on hold since the first day of the Serie A season. The 30-year-old Frenchman will be 34 when the punishment ends. His contract with the 'Vecchia Signora' will have ended two seasons earlier and he will either be a free agent or will have decided to retire.

The midfielder tested positive for synthetic testosterone on 20 August last year, before the match against Udinese in which the 'bianconeri' opened the season in the 'Calcio'. He did not even take the field, but a test was carried out, the result of which did not convince him. So he asked for a counter-analysis, which was carried out on 6 October. The second test confirmed that he had used a banned substance.

Since then, the issue has revolved around a possible agreement between the former Manchester United player and Italy's National Anti-Doping Prosecutor's Office, which was asking for him to stay out of football until 2028. The Frenchman rejected a consensus with the public institute because he remained confident of his innocence, but two months after the country of the boot's press certified that the player had refused to come to an understanding with the agency, he will have to face the harshest consequences on the table.

The point of the trial was that Paul Pogba and his lawyers always maintained that he took the vetoed compound unintentionally, something that was never believed by the lawyers investigating him. In most cases of a medical nature, the compound is injected directly into the patient's body, so there is hardly a chance that Massimiliano Allegri's pupil would have taken it unintentionally. At least, this is what those who