I agree that fans will judge based on what they see in the media and in public. The difference is, in another country, what is seen from Pogba will be of no problem at all. He is, if anything, one of the genuinely good guys in football.
I mean, let’s dissect this ‘social media activity’ of his. What is actually in it? He’s often out doing charity work, dancing at home with his brothers, in prayer, with his wife and child or attending other sporting events. Please correct me if I’m wrong. For a man of his status and celebrity, compare him to someone like Memphis Depay. Pogba is a lot richer and successful, and far more humble. He’s not constantly linked to different women, never partying, doesn’t have posts of his new Rolls Royce or a ‘hey, look at my new watch’ post or anything like that. He’s a young athlete who is obsessed with sport, which is good. He’s often either playing other sports or watching them when not working.
So in terms of ‘judging him by what he does off the pitch’, if that were done objectively, he’d have for more friends. If people understood his people a bit more. Because all I can see is his dancing being dismissed as ‘flashy’, or people displeased that his colours are too bright while he’s out living his life (also = flashy), he says ‘what’s good bro?’ Instead of ‘how you doing mate?’ when he meets a basketball player, the best the Warwick educated media can come up with is ‘erm, ‘bling bling footballer Paul Pogba’. I can bet that if Pogba was a lover of rock music or something some of the older white men in this land approve of and relate to, and all the clips of him dancing at home were instead of him sitting in his house playing a guitar, it would invoke an entirely different emotion. He’d be asked about his passion for music when Sky Sports come and do their one-to-one sit downs for their pre-match show, with the presenter trading Guns and Roses songs with him. Acceptable. But they know nothing about Daddy Lumba’s music, and have no desire to, so we’ll ‘tolerate the dancing as long as you’re winning games on the pitch’, otherwise, it’s a ‘silly distraction’.
I remember one journalist tweeting once a few years ago in response to Sterling doing something good about how ‘not what you’d usually see from your flashy, bling bling footballer’ (or something to that effect), and Gary Linekar pulled him up and said ‘maybe that’s because he isn’t a flashy bling bling footballer at all?’.
The ultimate point is that a lot of this profiling is what has led to a lot of public opinion, and a thread like this , designed to float the notion that Pogba is faking his injury and trying to force his way out, tend to come from. No disrespect to anyone in this thread, but many football fans are not famous for their intellect, and don’t often have the ability to discern for themselves. The media will just shape what they think. I’ve read from one poster in this thread that ‘it’s clear’ that Ole has sent Pogba to America because he’s a disruptive influence and wants him out. If you asked him to explain how such was clear, he would be unable to.