the possible extortion of star Paul Pogba that the French police are investigating and in which his brother Mathias would be involved adds to the list of sordid French football affairs, such as the mysterious beating of the footballer Kheira Hamraoui or the sexual blackmailing of Mathieu Valbuena that ended with Karim Benzema sentenced.
In a world that moves millions of euros and is surrounded by dubious companies interested in making a cut, elite soccer players are, due to their visibility, a perfect target, not only for conventional assaults or robberies (such as those that occur in the homes of several Paris Saint-Germain players), but for blackmailextortion and revenge.
France adds a good handful of these latest cases, the most recent that of the Pogba clan, which has come to light these days.
At the end of 2021 it was the turn of the PSG player Hamraoui, in which Eric Abidal was splashed; Y in 2015 it was Valbuena’s turnresulted in Karim Benzema being sentenced to one year in prison for complicity in blackmail.
“Sextape” by Valbuena.
Nothing foreshadowed that two players of the French team with a good relationship, who sang La Marseillaise together and embraced, would end up in court.
In October 2015, in the middle of the concentration of Les Bleus, Valbuena appeared at the Versailles police station to report blackmail for a tape of sexual content of his property that he had stored in his mobile.
In this unpleasant affair, Benzema was implicated, due to his relationship with the blackmailers, some small-time would-be criminals. Six years later, the judges considered that there was “personal involvement” of the Real Madrid striker in the blackmail of the then Lyon player.
A phone call between Benzema and his childhood friend, Karim Zenati – later also convicted – testifies to this. “KB9” was sentenced to one year in prison, although he was exempt from serving time for not having a criminal record. The merengue player gave up in addition to appealing the sentence, exhausted by a process in which who was considered a victim.
If Valbuena has not raised his head since that episode – he did not play for the French team anymore, had marital problems and wandered through the Russian, Turkish and Greek leagues – Benzema also fulfilled his particular sporting penance.
Separated by Didier Deschamps since that October 2015, he only returned to the national team in May 2021, five and a half years later, after reconciling with Deschamps.
During that period he missed the 2016 European Championship -France was runner-up at home- and, above all, the 2018 World Cup in Russia, which ended with the Gauls as champions.
Do we sleep with married men?
Another turbulent and mediatic episode happened in the emerging French women’s football. One night last November, when they were returning from dinner with her team, Kheira Hamraoui was in the car with her PSG and French teammate Aminata Diallo when they were robbed by two hooded men.
The objective was to intimidate Hamraoui. One of them hit the midfielder’s legs with an iron bar, to whom they blurted out “So, what’s going on? Do we sleep with married men?”.
The matter became known days later when Diallo was provisionally arrested, whose involvement was suspected.
The researchers thought that the player would like to harm Hamraoui for professional reasons. The two occupied the same position in midfield and were competition, especially in the France team.
The media was quick to evoke the gruesome case of American figure skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in 1994.
However, investigations ruled out Diallo’s involvement and the PSG dressing room turned against Hamraoui, which led to tensions and other fights. PSG could not reissue the 2021 league title nor did it return to the Champions League final.
As the weeks passed, the story became more entangled. Investigators established the link between Hamraoui and Eric Abidal, a French international Barcelona legend and liver cancer survivor.
It was learned that both had an extramarital relationship, which began when Hamraoui played in Can Barca, between 2018 and 2021. The eyes were then directed towards the wife of former soccer player, Hayet Abidalwho claimed to have nothing to do with the matter and took the opportunity to ask Abidal for a divorce, with whom he has five children.
Nine months later, the case is still open.
Rupture of the Pogba clan and evil eye to Mbappé
When Deschamps seemed to have calmed the waters of the current world champion -quite turbulent after the early elimination against Switzerland in the 2021 European Championship-, one of its pillars is tainted by another murky matter.
This weekend, Mathias Pogba, 32, announced “explosive revelations” about his little brother, Paul, 29. The Juventus Turin midfielder responded with a statement, released by his lawyers, announcing that the French police and Italian investigate an extortion.
Quickly, France Info public radio published details of the investigation that has been underway for a few weeks.
People in Paul’s inner circle they would have demanded 13 million eurosthree of them for immediate delivery, during a lock-up in an apartment with several armed men that allegedly occurred last March.
The midfielder would have delivered 100,000 euros and signed a document in which he promised to pay the rest. His brother Mathias would be among the blackmailers.
Mathias, a discreet footballer who became a soldier in the Celta de Vigo youth academy, made a surprising allegation that could have an impact on the French team.
Paul, whose family is originally from Guinea Conakry, would have hired an African sorcerer to cast an evil eye on Kylian Mbappé. According to Mathias, he has tangible proof of this.
