Paul Pogba’s 2018 Fifa World Cup glory now sits beside a far harsher ledger. After scoring the goal that made it 3-1 against Croatia, he later tested positive for DHEA in 2023, saw a four-year suspension cut to 18 months and then managed only 115 minutes last season for Monaco.
That is why Pogba is back in the conversation now: not because of one bad night, but because a champion once central to France’s title run has spent years trying to get back to anything like his old level. His attempt at a fresh start at Monaco in 2025 came after Juventus terminated his contract, leaving him to rebuild after injuries, athletic decline and personal problems had already slowed him down.
The DHEA case was the sharpest break in that decline. After a Serie A match in 2023, Pogba returned a positive test, and the original four-year ban that followed was later reduced to 18 months. He also had to deal with a blackmail attempt in which his brother Mathias and others allegedly tried to extort several million euros from him, turning what should have been the peak years after a World Cup win into years spent in courtrooms, treatment rooms and suspension limbo.
The contrast with some of his 2018 teammates is brutal. Benjamin Mendy was charged in 2021 with several alleged sexual offenses and later acquitted, but the damage to his standing never really healed; big clubs wanted nothing more to do with him, and his route after that ran through Lorient, FC Zurich and then Pogon Szczecin. His contract expires at the end of June, with his market value down to 400,000 euros, a long fall from the defender who once moved from Monaco to Manchester City for 57.50 million euros.
Adil Rami’s path looked different, but it led away from elite football all the same. He went to the World Cup as the fourth center-back and did not play a single minute, then saw Olympique Marseille terminate his contract in 2019 after he called in sick to training and instead turned up for a film shoot and stunts. He later won Les Traîtres, made critical remarks about Lamine Yamal and spent part of his public life trading on a persona that never fully recovered from Pamela Anderson’s description of him as violent and manipulative, which he denied.
There is still one unanswered piece in this story: Samuel Umt’s post-2018 career path is not laid out here. But the larger picture is already clear. The 2018 World Cup produced champions, yet for Pogba, Mendy and Rami it has become a reference point for decline, scandal and lives that moved in very different directions after the confetti fell.
