Paul Pogba has now been handed a four-year ban after testing positive not once but twice for testosterone by Italy’s National Anti-Doping authorities (NADO). It was confirmed yesterday, February 29.
The Juventus midfielder had been tested on August 20, 2023 after a match against Udinese where Juventus won 3-0 and Pogba was an unused substitute. This positive result led to a provisional suspension in September 2023.
Another sample was later taken and tested, which also returned positive. This led Italy’s anti-doping persecutors to call for the former Manchester United midfielder to be banned for four years.
This means that Pogba would not be allowed to play football professionally for the next four years, both for Juventus and for his country France. It also means that, because of the nature of the ban, Juventus has only been paying Pogba the lowest possible salary allowed by law under the circumstances, which is €2,000 per month.
This ban effectively ends his Juventus career, and possibly his football career, as his contract expires before the suspension runs out, with the 30-year-old’s contract expiring in June 2026, while the ban runs till 2027.
Pogba, in an Instagram post, said he’d appeal the ban with the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and try to get the ban reduced. This appeal will not see him try to make the argument that a more-than-normal level of testosterone wasn’t found in his system, but that its presence in his system was not intentional.
Indeed, it is possible to get NADO to reduce the ban to two years if he can prove that he did not consciously put extra testosterone in his system, an argument that is difficult to make, as his lawyers have already tried. It is truly difficult to make such a case, as footballers are usually careful with what they put into their system, considering the laws against substance use.
The ban could also be reduced to a few months if Pogba’s team can prove that the testosterone in his system was taken “out of competition” and did not affect his performance.
The ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport will take a few months to surface though, and a failed appeal would be damning.
An appeal is all Pogba has left, and if it fails, that could spell the end of the Juventus superstar’s football career.
