Has anyone seen Paul Pogba

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FIFA investigating Paul Pogba's Manchester United move - - (May 10 2017)


FIFA has announced it is investigating Paul Pogba's £89million transfer from Juventus to Manchester United last summer.

A FIFA spokesperson told Press Association Sport that the world governing body was looking at the deal through its Transfer Matching System (TMS), the online platform that monitors cross-border transfers.

"We can confirm that FIFA TMS has been requesting information on this matter. We have no further comment at this stage," said the FIFA spokesperson.

This is understood to be linked to claims that agent Mino Raiola will earn £41million from the world-record deal that saw the French player return to Old Trafford.

Those claims will be explained in greater detail in a forthcoming book called 'Football Leaks: The Dirty Business of Football', written by two journalists from German newspaper Der Spiegel.

The book will allege that the Italian-born, Dutch-based agent will receive payments for acting for the buying and selling club, as well as the player.

Acting for all three parties in a transfer is unusual but allowed under certain circumstances, and all details must be logged with FIFA TMS.

Neither Pogba nor Raiola has commented on the latest developments.

A spokesman for Manchester United said on Tuesday: "We don't comment on contracts.

"FIFA have had the documents since the transfer was completed last August.''

The 24-year-old Pogba, who left United to join Juventus in 2012, has been a regular in the Red Devils midfield this season, scoring seven goals in all competitions.

FIFA's interest in the transfer emerged on Tuesday night, shortly after sweeping changes were announced to its audit, ethics and governance committees.

The replacement of its chief ethics investigator and ethics judge was always likely to be a controversial move and so it has proved, with the ousted pair claiming their exit is "politically motivated" and "the end of the reform process" at FIFA.

Meanwhile, FIFA has voted to replace its chief ethics investigator and top judge in a move the pair have claimed signals an end to the organisation's reform efforts.

Swiss investigator Cornel Borbely and German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, who have combined to ban numerous football officials in recent years, will be removed following sweeping changes announced by the ruling council of world football's governing body.

They will be replaced by Colombian prosecutor Maria Claudia Rojas and Greek judge Vassilios Skouris, who was president of the European Court of Justice from 2003 to 2015,

Both Borbely and Eckert had said they wished to continue their work and branded their departures damaging to world football.

The FIFA Council decisions were announced in Bahrain on Tuesday, two days before the 67th FIFA Congress.

A statement from Borbely and Eckert said: "Their impending removal at the FIFA Congress will greatly set back the work of the ethics commission and means the de facto end of FIFA's reform efforts.

"It must be assumed therefore that in the medium and long term the whole of world football will suffer because of this decision.

"The work of the credible and independent ethics committee was and is an important part of the FIFA reforms, on which the trust of the public and FIFA stakeholders should have been rebuilt."

The statement said that a loss of confidence in FIFA's commitment to reform was now "inevitable" and the "already-battered image" of world football's governing body would be tarnished yet further.

It added that the removal of Borbely and Eckert was "obviously politically motivated".

It said: "It seems the FIFA hierarchy has valued its own and political interests higher than the long-term interests of FIFA."

Aside from the personnel changes, FIFA also confirmed how many slots each of its six confederations would get at the 48-team World Cup in 2026.

As widely anticipated, UEFA sees its allocation grow from 13 to 16, with the other regional bodies all seeing more substantial increases.

Two of the new slots will be decided by what FIFA described in a statement as an "intercontinental play-off tournament involving six teams", while the host's automatic place will be deducted from its confederation's quota.

In the event of co-hosts, as looks increasingly likely for 2026, the number of automatic places will be decided by the council.

On the subject of who will host the 2026 tournament, the council decided against ending the race now by simply giving it to the joint North American bid from Canada, Mexico and the United States but rivals from other confederations only have until August to declare their hands.

The short time-frame means the North American bid is almost guaranteed of victory, which should be confirmed at next year's congress.

Other decisions reached by the council include lifting the ban on Iraq being able to play matches, providing the security situation remains stable in the proposed venues, and London being named as the host of the Best FIFA Football Awards 2017 on October 23.