It’s been a long time coming, but Paul Pogba is #Pogback.
The Manchester United youth product has been reunited with his former team-mates at Old Trafford after completing a record-breaking transfer, with a cringeworthy hashtag thrown in for free.
Except he’s not back with his former team-mates. In the four years since Pogba left Manchester, plenty of other players (and three-and-a-half managers) have done the same.
We’ve taken a look back at the young Frenchman’s first Manchester United debut – against Leeds United in the 2011/12 League Cup – to see what has happened to that youthful matchday squad.
Ben Amos
The 2011/12 season was the pinnacle of Amos’ career, with three cup appearances to go with his solitary Premier League start (at home to Stoke City). One of those ‘blink and he’s suddenly 25’ goalkeepers, the England Under-21 international has just begun life in League 1 with newly-relegated Bolton Wanderers.
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Antonio Valencia
While the prospect of Valencia at right-back has become normal (if infuriating), back then the Ecuadorian was still known as a flying winger, brought over from Wigan for his attacking prowess. In many ways this was the beginning of the arc which drew to its obvious conclusion in David Moyes’ ‘death by 1,000 crosses’ game in 2014. Well we say ‘end’ – he seems to be set for a surprising-but-actually-very-predictable-when-you-think-about-it renaissance under Jose Mourinho.
Michael Carrick
Late-era Sir Alex Ferguson really loved papering over cracks, eh? Carrick at centre-back is one of the more sensible calls, at least compared to that Rafael-O’Shea-Gibson-Fabio midfield that got the better of Arsenal the previous season. Carrick, like Valencia, is still at Old Trafford
Zeki Fryers
The best ever Premier League footballer called Zeki, but also the worst, what’s happened to the Manchester-born defender is baffling. He was thought of as a future starter for United, a steal for Spurs and ‘worth a try’ for Crystal Palace, but has just 44 career appearances to his name at the age of 23. Still technically owned by Palace, for whom he has played three minutes of top-flight football.
Fabio
Fabio was meant to be the better of the Da Silva twins before injury and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer brought an end to that. One of only a handful of Solskjaer signings to still be at Cardiff, though he has been linked with a Premier League return this summer.
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Mame Biram Diouf
It wasn’t just in defence where Ferguson was liberal with the concept of ‘position’. Diouf has suffered from being shunted out wide by other managers, but the United boss was the first on these shores. Sir Alex can take the blame for the Senegal striker’s travails under Mark Hughes at Stoke, where he remains to this day.
Park Ji-Sung
Ferguson would have probably played Park in goal if needed, and he’d have done a good job if called upon. The South Korea midfielder had given so much to the point that he looked a spent force by the time he left for QPR in 2012. Two years later, he had hung up his boots.
Ryan Giggs
The man who Pogba replaced at the break, Giggs was at the midpoint between his lifetime achievement PFA Player of the Year award and that caretaker manager spell between Moyes and Van Gaal. By 2011, the Welshman was long past the Rooney v Russia point in his central midfield reinvention and fast approaching the Rooney v Iceland phase. He did score United’s third, mind you.
Federico Macheda
Not a winger. Come on now, Alex. He wasn’t even quick. Now at Cardiff, for whom he scored *counts on fingers* no goals last season.
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Michael Owen
Owen’s last hurrah came in that game at Elland Road, with a two-goal performance which set Manchester United on their way to victory. He only scored two more times in his career, away to Aldershot Town in the following round and a late consolation in that Stoke City spell before his 2013 retirement, which you’d already forgotten about. And neither of those really count now, do they?
Dimitar Berbatov
After being left out of the squad for the previous season’s Champions League final, Berbatov was phoning it in by this stage. The Bulgarian is currently without a club after leaving for Fulham in the summer of 2012 and ‘enjoying’ spells at Monaco and PAOK over the last two-and-a-half years.
Subs
As well as Pogba, who replaced Giggs, United brought on Danny Welbeck (now at Arsenal) for Diouf and Larnell Cole (now at Fulham) for Macheda. The remaining four subs were Tom Thorpe (Rotherham), Reece Brown (Bury), Michael Keane (Burnley) and a young goalkeeper by the name of David De Gea.
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