The struggles of an older brother less gifted than his football star sibling

For five days now, Mathias Pogba, 34, has been waiting in his charcoal grey suit, twisting his shoulders and turning his neck as if to shake off tension. Sitting in the front row of the courtroom at the Paris Tribunal, where the trial for kidnapping and extortion against his brother Paul Pogba is taking place, he has had to listen through all the hearings of the other five defendants, trying, unconvincingly, to clear their name.

When he finally spoke on Tuesday, December 3, it was to try and justify the videos he posted on social media in August 2022, in which he threatened his international football star brother with revelations destined to shatter his career. In the preceding weeks, he had repeatedly pressured his brother and their mother to make the player, then with Juventus Turin, pay the €13 million demanded of him by armed men on the night of March 19, 2022.

Was it his deep-seated jealousy of his little brother’s success that led him to act? Or his credulity in the face of stories of an armed assault staged by friends? The question kept coming up in the proceedings, as in previous days the various defendants struggled to lend credibility to their story of unknown bandits barging into a friendly gathering that wasn’t intended to scare the player into paying a large sum of money.

The prosecution case was clear: Mathias immediately believed his friends who told him that his brother had agreed to pay a ransom. He was furious that Paul didn’t keep his word. He was in contact with a group of friends from the Renardière neighborhood in Roissy-en-Brie, in the Paris region, who felt “forgotten” by their champion, and their resentment echoed his own: For several months, his brother has refused to send him any money, while he himself was without work.

‘Crazy thing’

Mathias is a bit like the failed football player of the siblings. At the age of 11, he was spotted and selected with his twin brother, Florentin, to attend a sports-study boarding school, before being recruited by Celta Vigo in Spain. However, he was less gifted and moved on to Quimper, in Brittany. He then played for a series of small second and third-division clubs in England, Italy and Spain. He played for the Guinea international team before becoming a sports commentator and the owner of a barber shop with his twin brother. Like other family members, he is used to getting financial help from Paul, who is one of the best international players.

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