Proving that you are only ever as old as the man you feel, Graeme Souness swam part of the English Channel in June.
He is 70 years old and, according to quotes from him at the time, he had never been in the sea despite living by the coast. Souness was raising £1million ($1.25m) for people affected by epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a horribly painful skin condition you might not have heard of before he started publicising it.
He would speak tenderly about a teenage girl, Isla Grist, who was suffering from severe EB and it is in those moments that people draw the contrast between the midfielder renowned for diving in with studs shin-high and a man with a caring streak.
Previously, Souness had challenged the homophobia of his own generation and spoken in support of gay rights during a broadcast on Sky Sports. A Pride parade in Brighton changed his perspective. “It was enlightening,” he said. “I learned so much.”
🗣 “I went to Brighton Pride and it was enlightening. We have to create an environment where they feel comfortable.” @MattMurray20 and Graeme Souness discuss the lack of openly gay players in the @premierleague.
More: https://t.co/XhJ44xA2qt #RainbowLaces pic.twitter.com/5z76yt57ad
— Sky Sports (@SkySports) December 8, 2019
The compassion and contrition resonated strongly because Souness, in the context of his career as a footballer, was about as hard as they came. If you care to find it, there is a video from the 1980s, of a game involving Rangers at Ibrox, which finds him at his most full-blooded. “And that’s a booking,” says commentator Archie Macpherson without a hint of sarcasm as Souness plants a boot on the groin of an opposing player. That was the sport back then. And that was Souness, a dynamic blend of brains and bedlam.
Where the compassion dries up, and where the inclination to go in two-footed still exists, is on the subject of Paul Pogba, the former Manchester United midfielder who, give or take, is everything Souness does not like in a footballer (as he has never been shy of telling us).
It is not as if Pogba is the only topic on which he is outspoken. Sky ended Souness’ 15-year run as a pundit with them at the end of last season, and he was a traditional pundit in the sense that he was paid for his opinion and gave it in spades. But with Pogba there has been a sense of criticism becoming personal, of being the bone Souness simply refuses to discard.
He was back at it this week, as part of an appearance on the Second Captains podcast. Pogba, in fairness, is newsworthy at the moment, not that he is often anything else. Now under contract at Juventus, he is provisionally suspended from playing after returning a positive drugs test for testosterone and now awaits the outcome of further sample analysis and investigations. Reports in Italy say he intends to protest his innocence, claiming he took the substance unknowingly or unintentionally.
Paul Pogba’s Juventus career has been stalled by his positive drugs test (Gabriele Maltinti/Getty Images)
The drugs test came up on the podcast, with Souness — unsurprisingly — refusing to give the Frenchman the benefit of the doubt. Then again, he has never had much sympathy for Pogba: it started with his transfer fee, with Souness saying Manchester United had paid too much for him at £89million in 2016; it moved onto performance and intelligence, or what Souness saw as a lack of a “football brain”; and then to a perceived “selfish” streak. The tone from Souness was always the same: that this guy could be the business if only he switched himself on by finding it in him to properly pull a leg.
And that is where the rhetoric about Pogba becomes problematic. At various points over the past seven or eight years, Souness has referred to him as “a bit of a YouTuber”, “not up for the fight ahead”, “a doddle to play against”. Little by little and comment by comment, it paints the picture of Pogba being a playboy or part-timer, a player with supreme talent who shows up now and again but is really in it for the showbiz experience and, when he is not winning the World Cup with France, worries as much about his haircut as whatever he’s doing on the field.
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On the Second Captains podcast, Souness denied that he had been unfair to Pogba, acknowledging that he is “extremely talented” but that he is more interested in showing “the world how cute and clever” he is rather than dominating opponents. He said he was the “kind of individual (who) wrecks your club” before applying the coup de grace of saying he was “a lazy twat”.
Now, Pogba and Manchester United were not a roaring success, either first time around or second. That can be agreed, although it is possible to argue all night about who is to blame for the clown show at Old Trafford. But Souness’ comments are riddled with assumptions about the character of a footballer he has never met or spoken to in a meaningful way: the Scot did suggest that a meeting between the two of them had been floated some years ago, where he was prepared to offer Pogba the benefit of his experience, but it never happened.
Graeme Souness left his role as a Sky pundit at the end of last season (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
Pogba has, as a rule, opted not to spend much time constantly answering back at his critics. In 2020, while still at United, he did pointedly claim he “didn’t even know who he (Souness) was”, but amid his general silence, an image has been perpetuated.
Tactical analysis of a professional athlete is one thing. It is perfectly valid to pick apart Pogba’s positioning, movement or passing in a technical manner, and football has a tradition of applying harsher scrutiny to signings who cost large sums of money. It is fair to analyse running stats and see how they stack up if physical effort is under the microscope.
It is fair to treat him as other footballers are treated but Souness’ view of him runs dangerously close to a character assassination, which leaves you asking how well he or any of us really know Pogba.
Is he a waster? Is he misunderstood? How many people have got into his head? And when it comes to it, is the accusation of laziness itself a lazy trope? There is a history of black footballers being stereotyped in that way, as Ron Atkinson, the former Manchester United manager turned television pundit, infamously did with Marcel Desailly in 2004. Atkinson called Desailly, one of the most successful footballers of recent years, “thick” and “lazy” before using a racially offensive epithet. The comments were picked up by microphones Atkinson had assumed were switched off and cost him his job as a television pundit.
It is not as if Souness is not alive to sensitivities around language and race. In June 2020, he chastised himself publicly for failing to challenge racist remarks during his playing career, saying he was “angry with himself now”, but Sky apologised in that same year after he described an overreaction by Erik Lamela in a meeting between Manchester United and Tottenham as “very Latin”.
The impression of him being a man who is very much the product of his time was exacerbated last year when he called football a “man’s game” within earshot of fellow pundit Karen Carney. But while Souness refused to back down over those remarks — despite attracting heavy criticism — he is clearly more than a one-track mind who cannot divert from his own line of thinking.
By his own admission, he was happy to be enlightened on the subject of gay rights, to shift his views as a result of education. But on Pogba there is no movement, no willingness to reassess or to wonder if the Frenchman — with plenty going on in his life — is someone it would help to know better. Maybe Souness has him right. Maybe we will never be sure. But after almost a decade of a largely one-way feud rumbling on, perhaps enough has been said.
(Top photo: Greig Cowie/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
