Ask Paulo Dybala, and he’ll tell you that Paul Pogba misses playing for Juventus. As the Argentinian put it in an interview with Corriere dello Sport in December, “You just need to look at our league standing, and compare it to Manchester United’s.”
Or maybe there’s more to it than that. If Pogba does indeed hanker for his days in Turin, then one suspects it is at least in part because he misses playing with Dybala. The pair were inseparable during the Frenchman’s final season at Juventus, united by mutual admiration but also a youthful sense of mischief and fun. They danced, dabbed and lost hours playing video games together.
It was during one of those latter sessions that Pogba came up with his nickname for Dybala. “You know what I call him?” mused Pogba during an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa. “Square R2. That’s the combination of buttons you need to press on a PlayStation to do a turning shot. He always scores goals like that.”
Anyone who has tracked Dybala’s development in Serie A would recognise the moves Pogba referenced. Barcelona, though, must not have been paying attention. Seven …read more