The French international star player Paul Pogba has assured fans that he is ‘still alive’ after a controversial report went viral casting doubt on his career.
The French midfielder is currently serving a four-year doping ban, with his legal team putting together an appeal against the ban.
On Wednesday, Guardian Nigeria released excerpts from an interview with Al Jazeera in 2023, in which he discussed the harsh scrutiny facing elite footballers.
Pogba said: ‘Look at people like Cristiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi. They always have to prove again that they are Cristiano and Messi, after everything that they’ve done. Football is very beautiful but it is cruel.
‘People can forget you the next day. You can do something great then the next day you are nobody.
‘People are waiting for you, to say “he’s done, his career is finished”, so many things, like I’m over, I’m dead, Paul Pogba doesn’t exist anymore.’
The last words of that quote were taken out of context and shared on social media earlier this week.
Multiple reports appeared to mistake Pogba’s old quotes for a recent cry for help, leaving fans scared that the footballer was suicidal.
Pogba has now come out to set the record straight that he is alive well.
He wrote on his Instagram story this week: ‘Old sarcastic comments deceitfully portrayed as “genuine and recent” to generate clicks. I’m still alive guys don’t worry.’
