Just as Juventus have struggled to muster a positive start to their Serie A title defence, France midfielder Paul Pogba has failed to take up the mantle of being the Turin side’s star player.
Seven matches into the domestic campaign and the table makes for grim reading for fans of the Bianconeri. They have only eight points to their credit, have already suffered as many losses as they did in the league in the whole of last term and, perhaps most damningly, lie below an AC Milan side in the midst of crisis.
Of course, the campaign was never going to be straightforward for the Turin giants. Over the summer they lost stars such as Arturo Vidal, Andrea Pirlo and Carlos Tevez, and have been forced to move on from the side that heroically progressed to the Champions League final in June.
There was a lavish spend in an attempt to match and improve upon the summer departures, yet the new-look Juve were first and foremost to be built around Pogba – the player they had to fight so hard to prevent losing to Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain or Chelsea.
The 22-year-old, however, has found his new-found status tough to bear. Shifted into a more advanced role and presented with the No.10 jersey formely of Tevez, Alessandro Del Piero, Michel Platini and Omar Sivori, the expectation is for his role to shift from all-action midfielder to creative catalyst, from chief of the supporting cast to centre stage.
Pogba may have been a regular at the Juventus Stadium since spectacularly barging his way out of Manchester United in the summer of 2012, decrying a lack of first-team football aged only 18, but the self-assurance that saw him battle his way out of Sir Alex Ferguson’s clutches has been scarcely evident since being handed the crucial role in Italy’s most successful club.
Before he had the experience of Pirlo and Vidal alongside him to call upon; now he is expected to drive forward a young team lacking in genuine top-level experience. It is one that he has so far found chastening.
"We’re not asking him to score three goals a game or win a match by himself," coach Masimiliano Allegri argued last month. "We’re simply asking to Paul to play as he knows how, to be a little more carefree.
"He’s only 22. At 22, you can’t act and play like you’re 30. He must put his ideas in place and play so that he can exploit his full potential."
Allegri’s tactical shift has not helped. Juve have settled into a hybrid of 3-5-2 and 4-4-2, with Pogba recently shifted into a role that effectively means he is playing narrow on the left side of midfield. In such a position it is difficult to exert a decisive influence, even for such a talented performer.
Last season Pogba found the net eight times in only 26 Serie A appearances; this term he has just one goal from seven – and even that was a penalty.
The ramifications of his downturn have been noted by national team coach Didier Deschamps, who plans to use the Paris-born youngster as a starting player at Euro 2016.
"Pogba is already at a very good level so now it is a question of effectiveness and efficiency," the France boss said on Wednesday.
"He’s capable of great pieces of skill that excite the crowd but are not always the best thing to do. He is a creative player but he can improve. He has to help the team."
Deschamps has been happy to experiment in recent friendlies, unburdened by the pressure of competitive football due to France’s host-nation status at the Euros. He has also tried Pogba in an advanced role, but his trials have been equally as fruitless as those at club level.
The Juve man, who has seemed most comfortable playing with the national team in a 4-3-3 system in which he and Blaise Matuidi operate as box-to-box players, was tried in the role against Albania back in June. Fatigued after the Champions League final, Pogba turned in an unimpressive second-half cameo as Les Bleus slumped to a shock 1-0 loss, but was equally disappointing when fielded in a similar role in the 1-0 success in Portugal three months later.
As Deschamps pointed out, decision making – the attribute critical to the success of any No.10 – has been the downfall of Pogba thus far.
Maturity is something that can only be gathered through experience, and former Manchester United team-mate Rio Ferdinand has backed the young Frenchman to be a Ballon d’Or candidate within a few years.
Speaking to BT Sport, the former England centre-back said: "I think he has the personality to be the best. I think Pogba really will go on to be the best player in the world in the next three or four years. He's got that personality. That desire to be the best player.
"The way he trains, the way he looks at his game. He believes in himself like not many other players I've seen."
In the short term, the No.10 jersey is not the correct fit for Pogba, and though he is capable of incredible feats of skill, in the long term it may also be that he is suited to playing in a deeper role. This should not, however, be considered a slight on his talent.
At the moment he is simply going through an essential phase of his development and will surely come through it a more complete and even more devastating player.
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