The celebration of his goal against Iceland, when he ran clear of his team-mates then coolly stopped and saluted, suggested a man untroubled by the relatively indifferent European Championship he had been having here over the past few weeks.

Paul Pogba’s trajectory has been relentlessly upward, though, and even if he does not steal the show in the final he looks set in the end to eclipse anything achieved by his French team-mates, even Antoine Griezmann, whose performances have been at heart of the host nation’s success so far.

His form for Juventus this season might have suggested otherwise at times, but Pogba remains a young man packed full of enormous potential rather than one of the game’s very greatest players.

To date, though, his progress has been relentless and, having decided they were not prepared to make the accommodations required to play a major part in his development in the past, Manchester United are now on the verge of paying a hefty price to have him play a central role in their future.

Reports in France have put that figure at around €80 million, while the British media have it at an attractively round £100 million, a sum that would make him the world’s most expensive signing.

Either way, it is recognition of the fact that, at 23, the Parisian midfielder potentially has a decade of dominating top level games in him.

There are no certainties, of course, but the way things are going, United could pay top dollar for Pogba, get three, four or more great seasons out of him and still sell him for a profit.

Media scrutiny

All of which seems remarkable for a player who has been perhaps France’s third best player over the course of this tournament. Like Griezmann, although for very different reasons, he disappointed in the opener against Romania, when he showed a characteristic inclination to attempt the spectacular when something more simple might have been better at times.

Amid enormous local media scrutiny of his performance and Didier Deschamps’s reaction to it, he was dropped next time out, when France played Albania, but came on at half-time and played an important role as the team secured two late goals to win.

Since then he has had his moments, both good and bad. The match against Ireland contained a few of each, with the clumsy foul he committed for the penalty early on prompting high-profile commentators to question his worth on social media before a succession of surging diagonal runs started to provide evidence of just one of the many things he can do really well.

Born to Guinean parents – his two older brothers, both professional footballers themselves were born there before the family moved to France and each has represented the west African nation – in a relatively comfortable suburb on the east side of Paris, Pogba was reckoned to be an average enough player when he joined his local club at six or seven years of age. But he had “more character,” than the other kids, one of his earliest coaches, Sambou Tati, told Le Monde, “more dedication,” and by the time he was 10 he was at the heart of everything in the game he played.

By the time he was 16, the young Pogba was employing a personal trainer during the off season and seeing a dietician off his own bat the rest of the time. He was clearly ambitious and completely focused on his progression, something that influenced the various moves he made, from US Roissy to Le Havre to Manchester United and finally to Juve, none of which was free from rancour or controversy.

Young talent

The recriminations after the switch that brought him to Old Trafford laid bare the extent of the cynicism that bedevils the game when it comes to the pursuit of young talent, with one club, it seemed, as bad as the other in the way they behaved, but it is his departure from Manchester less than three years later that gets talked about more.

Pogba was just 16 when he arrived but consistently impressed with the club’s underage side while also developing very well physically and by 2011, as Alex Ferguson promoted him to the senior squad, the manager explicitly acknowledged that a teenager this good would have to be given opportunities or he would leave again.

A season and half later, he was gone after just seven first-team appearances, three of them in the league and most from the bench.

Money played its part, with his agent Mino Raiola demanding a great deal more than the club was willing to offer. But ultimately everything pointed to the fact that either United did not see his full potential or believe he would achieve it or that they were, at least, not willing to invest so heavily up front in the different ways required on the basis of a pay-off that might be some way down the line.

By contrast, Antonio Conte began to put faith in him immediately at Juventus, where he was initially protected as he grew by the presence of Andrea Pirlo and Arturo Vidal. He played regularly without being subjected to the full weight of expectation that might have otherwise fallen upon him.

Until the season just finished that is when, with Pirlo and Vidal gone and after an uncertain start, he stepped up to the mark in some style.

He simply had to take more responsibility, especially on the attacking side of things, he acknowledged towards the end of a season in which he scored 10 goals and had 12 assists.

“Can I still progress?” he has asked since. “Of course, I’m always looking for perfection.”

That might just be pushing it but few doubt now that he will be very, very good.