Jose Mourinho at it again with Paul Pogba snafu; will either one of them survive this Man U mess?

If Jose Mourinho’s long career in soccer management is really an accidental exercise in performance art, his elaborate act always requires a foe. Wherever he works, and he’s worked lots of places by now, and rarely for more than three years, he finds an antagonist to his own righteous and unfailingly mistreated protagonist.

He never picks an easy target either. It’s usually a leading player, a locker room stalwart.

Now, in this Manchester United chapter of his career, which threatened to close just a few weeks ago, Mourinho briefly flirted with making club CEO Ed Woodward his patsy – until he seemingly realized he wouldn’t survive a power struggle with Woodward and reconsidered. Instead, he has settled on Paul Pogba, United’s most expensive signing of all time – and briefly the world-record transfer. (After Mourinho’s legendary predecessor Sir Alex Ferguson let Pogba leave United for Juventus on a free transfer.)

Pogba’s relationship with Mourinho has been rocky for a while. Last season, Mourinho benched the 25-year-old French midfield metronome for poor form. Even though he was perhaps the world’s best player in his position before coming over from Juve in 2016 and has consistently excelled for Les Blues – lifting the World Cup this past summer as its captain. Per reports, Pogba has privately mused about a transfer to FC Barcelona ever since and the Catalan club made an offer over the summer that was rejected.

On Saturday, Pogba captained United for just the third time as it slumped to a limp 1-1 tie with lowly Wolves at home. Mourinho blamed a lack of motivation in his team. Pogba told the press the tactics didn’t suit the Red Devils in a game like that.

“We are at home and we should play much better against Wolves. We are here to attack,” Pogba said after the game, per the BBC. “I think teams are scared when they see Manchester United attacking and attacking. That was our mistake.”

It was a thinly veiled dig at Mourinho, even though Pogba then denied as much on Twitter.

But then the obvious tension at practice says otherwise.

It seems Mourinho was annoyed about something Pogba put on Instagram – possibly a clip of Pogba laughing with friends that’s since been deleted.

At any rate, Pogba was right. One of the dispiriting things about Mourinho’s time at United has been his refusal to maximize the enormous attacking talent in his team and instructing it to sit back and wait out opponents instead. It’s this tactical passivity that will likely also be his undoing there.

Mourinho, naturally, didn’t respond well to being called out by his vice-captain – Antonio Valencia is the regular captain when he plays. According to ESPN, Mourinho told Pogba in front of the entire team that he’d never captain it again.

And in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup game with Derby County, Pogba was not even named to the bench. Officially, he was rested, but Pogba’s workload has hardly been excessive lately.

Sure, it’s a competition most big clubs don’t much care about, but several other regulars were in the starting lineup. And United was summarily eliminated by a second-tier team.

Evidently, Pogba is somehow good enough to captain an experienced and stacked France team to the World Cup title but not to lead a stumbling seventh-placed Premier League team.

Mourinho reportedly retains the backing of the club hierarchy in stripping Pogba of the vice-captaincy and defended his actions, essentially by saying he doesn’t have to defend them.

The standoff might not last terribly long. It currently looks like neither Mourinho nor Pogba is likely to stick around at United for all that much longer. But for now, the manager has his foil, just as he had Iker Casillas at Real Madrid and Juan Mata at Chelsea – before reconciling and building a productive relationship at United, perhaps suggesting the whole thing was an act. Each time, he made an example of a team star and locker room leader by beginning a vendetta to assert his authority.

Pogba, for that matter, also isn’t an easy target. But he is an obvious one. Pogba was heavily criticized before Mourinho piled on. Never mind that Mourinho insists on forcing the Frenchman into a more conservative role that debilitates some of Pogba’s biggest strengths: his engine and range, and curbing his freedom to join up in the attack. Which is to say that Mourinho himself has very much been at fault for Pogba’s struggles at United.

But ever since his return to Manchester – done up big with the adidas #Pogback campaign – Pogba has been a target for excessive criticism. Perhaps it’s his abundant confidence and playful personality that rubs people the wrong way. Or maybe it’s the price tag, the $115 million fee, a world record that’s since been shattered by Neymar’s 2017 move from Barca to Paris Saint-Germain for $260 million.

There’s really hardly ever any living up to a world-record fee. No matter how well you do, the sum is still unprecedented, and so there’s no benchmark for success. Since Pogba’s transfer, four players have been sold for more. They haven’t really delivered on their fees either. How can they?

Sometimes, with Pogba, the criticism feels sinister. Prejudiced, even. He’s done little to merit all the hate. It isn’t his fault that United has been a mess since Ferguson’s retirement. He’s doing his best, just as most of his peers are. Yet to many, it’s always Pogba’s fault.

When he plays well, it’s either overlooked or considered in line with his responsibility relative to his purchase price and ample wages. When he doesn’t play well, the recriminations wash over him as much as any player in the game.

And yet, when he plays for France, he looks liberated and joyous, like the player United thought it would get every weekend. So the problem probably isn’t Pogba.

Now, Mourinho has positioned himself opposite his best and most expensive and maybe most popular player. That’s not worked out well for him in the past. On Saturday at West Ham United, Mourinho’s job might be on the line once more. While the club and most of its fans still hope very much that Pogba will stick around beyond this season.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Yahoo Sports soccer columnist and a sports communication lecturer at Marist College. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.

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