Thiago Motta refused on Saturday to say whether Paul Pogba had a future at Juventus after the France midfielder’s four-year doping ban was slashed to 18 months. Pogba, a World Cup winner with Les Bleus in 2018, will be able to return to competitive football from March 11 next year following Friday’s ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Italian media report that Juve might still seek to terminate Pogba’s contract, which runs until the end of June 2026 and is reportedly worth up to 10 million euros ($10.97 million) a season.

“The club will assess the situation and make a decision if necessary. Paul was a great player but he hasn’t played for a long time,” coach Motta told reporters ahead of Sunday’s Serie A fixture with Cagliari.

“All I’m thinking about is our match tomorrow, nothing else really matters as far as I’m concerned.”

Juventus refused to comment on Pogba, who tested positive for testosterone following the Turin club’s opening Serie A fixture of last season, a 3-0 win at Udinese in August 2023.

He was provisionally suspended the following month and then banned for four years by the Italian National Anti-Doping Tribunal in February, a sanction which put the 31-year-old’s career at risk.

Pogba’s representatives said the testosterone came from a food supplement prescribed by a doctor he consulted in the United States.

Pogba collected four Serie A titles in his first stint at Juventus between 2012 and 2016 but had a string of problems on and off the pitch after his 2022 return from Manchester United.

During the 2022-23 season, Pogba made just 10 appearances for the club, mainly due to a knee injury that also ruled him out of the World Cup in Qatar, where France lost out to Argentina in the final in December 2022.

He was also the victim of a case of organised extortion, for which six men, including his brother Mathias, were last month ordered to stand trial.

Since Pogba last played for his club at Empoli in early September last year, Juve have switched manager from Massimiliano Allegri to Motta and brought in a host of new players as part of a rebuild.

Juve, who finished third last term without Pogba, splashed out over 120 million euros on midfielders Teun Koopmeiners, Douglas Luiz and Khephren Thuram in a busy summer on the transfer market.

In a match that might have been a test of Thiago Motta‘s credentials to take over Juventus, his Bologna team made a blazing start but collapsed at the end and drew 3-3 with the Turin giants on Monday. Former Italy midfielder Motta’s contract with Bologna, where the 41-year-old has been since 2022, expires at the end of the season. His team have been a revelation this season and are already qualified for next season’s Champions League. Monday’s draw preserved third place, ahead of Juventus on tiebreak.

Juventus playing their first match since Massimiliano Allegri was fired following a spectacular tantrum as his team won the Italian Cup last week, started in a daze.

After two minutes, Riccardo Calafiori side-footed into the roof of net as the ball dropped to him in space following a corner.

On 11 minutes, Argentinian Santiago Castro, a 19-year-old making his first Serie A start, headed in at the near post. The only challenge he had to survive was from teenage team-mate Kacper Urbanski, also eager to nod in from close range.

With Juventus seemingly uninterested in running or tackling, unmarked Jens Odgaard then smashed home a 13th-rebound but was deemed offside.

Juventus showed more bite after their half-time encounter with interim coach Paolo Montero, the former Uruguay defender who had been managing the club’s Under-19 team.

With the visitors pressing, Castro pinched the ball in midfield in the 53rd minute and launched a Bologna counter-attack. It finished with centre back Calafiori running in alone on goal and chipping Wojciech Szczesny.

After both coaches made five changes, Bologna imploded in five chaotic minutes.

Federico Chiesa pounced on an error by Jhon Lucumi to pull a goal back for Juventus after 76 minutes. 

Motta had taken off both goalscorers. Montero, it turned out, had sent on two. 

Substitute Arkadiusz Milik added the second for the visitors from a deflected free kick after 83 minutes. A minute later another replacement Kenan Yildiz skipped through the home defence and levelled.

Montero danced in the rain on the touchline.

He is in charge for the last two games of the season.

Motta has been rumoured for weeks to be joining Juve next season, with Allegri’s sacking on Friday only heightening the speculation.

“I haven’t decided, nor signed anything,” Motta told reporters ahead of  Monday night’s game.

“Next week I’ll sit down with the president (Joey Saputo) to take a decision together. Then we will make an announcement together.

Allegri was sent off in the final minutes of last Wednesday’s 1-0 Cup Final win against Atalanta for ranting at match officials and is also alleged to have manhandled threatened the chief editor of newspaper Tuttosport.

The 56-year-old won 12 trophies, including five Serie A titles, and reached two Champions League finals with Juventus over two spells as manager.