Jose Mourinho sets Paul Pogba post-World Cup task with Manchester United

The United manager wants to see Pogba show the same focus as he did with France

Jose Mourinho has challenged Paul Pogba to give Manchester United ‘the best he has to give’ this season and suggested that the midfielder can lose focus while playing for his club.

Pogba impressed for France at this summer’s World Cup, playing with control and consistency throughout the tournament and scoring in the final as Les Bleus were crowned world champions for the second time in their history.

Pogba’s displays in Russia followed a difficult year at club level, spent in and out of the team, and led some to ask how Mourinho might extract the best out of United’s record signing.

Mourinho, however, believes that Pogba must take responsibility for his performances and has claimed that the World Cup showed what the midfielder is capable of when he concentrates on football.

“I don’t think it’s about us getting the best out of him,” Mourinho told ESPN. “It’s about him giving the best he has to give.

“I think the World Cup is the perfect habitat for a player like him to give the best. Why? Because it’s closed for a month, where he can only think about football. Where he’s with his team on the training camp, completely isolated from the external world, where they focus just on football, where the dimensions of the game can only motivate.”

Mourinho went on to suggest that the rhythms of the club football season can lead Pogba to lose focus.

“During a season, you can have a big match then a smaller match, then one even smaller, then you can lose your focus, you can lose your concentration, then comes a big match again,” he said.

“In the World Cup, the direction of the emotion, of the responsibility, of the big decisions is always growing up [further]. You are in the group phase, you go to the last 16, to the quarter-finals, to the semi-finals, to the finals. This feeds the motivation. This feeds the concentration of a player.

“So I think it was the perfect environment for him. At the same time, players in the World Cup, they really feel that extra commitment with a country, with the people, that extra responsibility that makes them – by the emotional point of view – to be sometimes even overcommitted.

“They play for the team, and only for the team, and the team is the most important thing, and they do everything to try to succeed. So I think it’s the perfect environment for a talented player like him to focus, to fully focus on the job.”