Former World Cup winner Paul Pogba has been banned from football for four years due to doping.
Pogba will turn 31 next month, meaning he would not be able to return to the pitch until he is almost 35.
Pogba’s suspension completes a dramatic fall from grace for a player who was once the most expensive footballer in the world.
The midfielder, who has not played for Juventus since September, was tested in August and results showed elevated levels of testosterone, a hormone that increases athletes’ endurance.
The tribunal said Pogba had violated anti-doping rules when they found the prohibited substance “non-endogenous testosterone metabolites”, adding that the results were “consistent with the exogenous origin of the target compounds”.
A second test sample has now been checked and Pogba has been handed a four-year ban, considered among the strongest possible punishments for the offence.
Pogba’s suspension completes a dramatic fall from grace for a player who was once the most expensive footballer in the world
The former Manchester United midfielder tested positive for testosterone after Juventus’s first game of the season against Udinese, and was given his hefty punishment by an anti-doping prosecutor’s office in Italy on Thursday [today].
Pogba’s lawyers had rejected a plea deal and hoped to get their client a lighter sentence after claiming that he had accidentally ingested the substance that caused the positive test.
However, the prosecution did not believe Pogba’s defence, and he has now been given a ban that could potentially end his career.
The Frenchman returned to Old Trafford in 2016 after coming through the club’s academy before thriving at Juventus, with United paying the Italian giants £89m for his services.
Pogba won the World Cup with France two years later, scoring in the final against Croatia, but struggled to hit the same heights at United.
Pogba’s lawyers claimed that he had accidentally ingested the substance that caused the positive test
