Ligue 1: After a ten-month suspension for doping, Paul Pogba will return to the pitch with AS Monaco

Returning to the field to put his non-sporting problems behind him. Paul Pogba signed a two-year contract with AS Monaco this Saturday, June 29. The 2018 world champion hopes to revive a career that has been on hold for three years due to injuries, a kidnapping case in which he was the victim, and a doping suspension .

Announced for several days, the information was made official by AS Monaco late Saturday afternoon, via a short video showing a pickaxe (the tool is also the player's nickname) overlooking the La Turbie training center. In another video, the 32-year-old player is seen in tears as he signs his contract, in front of sporting director Thiago Scuro. He will be presented to the press on July 3rd along with fellow signings Eric Dier and Ansu Fati.

A key player for the 2018 World Cup-winning French national team, Pogba (91 caps) embodied the solidity of his midfield, and will be playing in Ligue 1 for the first time. Trained at Le Havre, he joined Manchester United at the age of 16, before alternating between 2011 and 2024 between spells at the Manchester club and Juventus.

His last match, played with the Italian club, dates back to the end of the summer of 2023. The French international was at the time banned for four years after testing positive for non-endogenous testosterone metabolites (DHEA) after the match against Udinese on August 20, 2023. The sanction was finally reduced to eighteen months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), considering that the ingestion of the substance "was not intentional and resulted from taking a dietary supplement prescribed by a doctor in Florida." Since March 2025 and the end of his suspension, Pogba was allowed to play again, but he was without a club after the termination of his contract with Juventus in November 2024.

At the end of April, American media reported that he was in negotiations with Major League Soccer club DC United of Washington. His name had also been regularly linked to Olympique de Marseille. The midfielder will ultimately attempt to bounce back with another Ligue 1 club, Monaco, third in the last season's league and qualified for the Champions League.

The bet is raised. Because in addition to his suspension for doping, these last three years have been a long tunnel for the Frenchman, regularly injured and very emotionally affected by the extortion and kidnapping case of which he was the victim and for which his brother Mathias and five of his childhood friends were sentenced at the end of 2024 to prison terms of up to eight years . "I can finally turn the page on this extremely painful period. Now that the judgment has been rendered, I can fully concentrate on my return to professional football," he wrote to AFP after the decision.

The new chapter that is opening is surrounded by many questions about the Frenchman's physical fitness. Based in Miami, he has been posting a number of photos and videos of intensive training on his social media in recent weeks. But his last real full season dates back to 2021-2022. During that season, he played 34 matches for Manchester United.

In Monaco, Pogba will also pursue his dream of returning to Les Bleus to participate in the 2026 World Cup in North America. He will be able to follow the entire physical and technical preparation of AS Monaco, which resumed training on Saturday, six weeks before the start of Ligue 1, scheduled for the weekend of August 15.

On the Ligue 1 pitches, the midfielder will encounter several of his former teammates from the French national team. He will notably be reunited with Olivier Giroud, who, after many years of exile abroad and a final stint in the United States, is expected to soon sign with Lille and return to France.